Home > Twenty Third and Twenty Fourth Issue: Different Worlds June 2014

Twenty Third and Twenty Fourth Issue: Different Worlds June 2014

The twenty-third and twenty-fourth double issue of RPG Review has been released. Either download the PDF[1] or read online.

Editorial

Welcome to another issue of RPG Review. To be perfectly honest, when I started this 'zine I did so on a bit of a whim, and with very little forethought. My reasoning was that after thirty or so years of playing roleplaying games that I was very likely indeed to continue to do so. Surely, I thought, putting together a 64 page quarterly 'zine couldn't be that onerous. Ahh, the folly of enthusiasm. Now we're approaching our sixth year of RPG Review, and there's still a few thousand visitors each month who download this little publication, something which I find quite remarkable on its own. Certainly quite encouraging!

This issue, “Different Worlds”, is nominally about different game settings. But it is also with respect to a gaming magazine of the 1980s of the same title. It is with great fortune then that we can kick off with an interview with the editor of that most esteemed magazine, Tadashi Ehara. Finally we can an idea about his life and roleplaying.

There is, of course, a number of articles directly related to this issues theme. We have received two sets of designer's notes from Ville Huohvanainen with a high fantasy anime style with Mundus, and anthropmorphic space by Tim Westhaven's Vanguard.

Yours truly has a broad scope on gaming world cosmology, originally inspired by Rolemaster's old Campaign Law, along with an article of ten amazing game worlds. One of the more innovative and exotics settings is then explored by Caji Gends, with Skyrealms of Jorune. With a style reminiscent of Lonely Planet travel guides, Martin Tegelj provides an Eclipse Phase article that takes us Saturn's moon, Titan. Imagine a moon so large it has atmosphere, and hydrocarbon polar lakes? Oh, that's a very different world indeed!

Regular contributers Karl Brown and Michael Cole provide an excellent set of articles in their favourite game settings. Karl provides for his game Gulliver's Trading Company, a long as reviews and alternative species for the the Burroughsian settings of Mars. For his part, Michael further elaborates on the use the Lake Town region of Middle Earth in the period of the ICE modules, but this time with the GURPS game system.

Dungeons & Dragons has always been a great contributor to many and varied game settings and this issue has new contributors Daniel Lunsford, and Dex Tefler providing reviews of Mystara, Planescape, Forgotten Realms, and Ravenloft - certainly places where many of us have taken at least a character or two and often with less than easy journeys. Especially for those who visited the corrupting influence of Ravenloft! That place was tough - even compared to Planescape.

RPG Review also likes to provide some "hands on" immediate material, and this episode is no exception. In this case I have put finger to keyboard with a well-playtested scenario, Masters of Duck and Leath which combines Glorantha with Pendragon. Luke Geissmann enjoyed his participation sufficiently to write a few lines of poetry of the epic journey of his particular duck. Finally there is an outline of a campaign along with some sample scenarios and characters for Werewolf:The Apocalypse set in the more recent and real-world experience of the Yugoslav Wars.

As tangents to traditional roleplaying games, Wendy Allison gives a review of a notable console computer game, Ambrov X, whereas one of my habits, the augmented reality game based on Google maps, Ingress, is reviewed - and with a few of its problems noted. With a sense of appropriate timing, Ursula Vernon's original livejournal post, "A Dark Elf Solstice" is reprinted here in appropriate time for the alternate hemisphere. Andrew Moshos takes up two animated fantasy reviews with Frozen, and How To Train Your Dragon 2, both of which already seem destined for some memory. Finally, and by no means least, Wu Mingshi gives her special brand of gaming industry news.

It is hard to believe but within these 128 pages one has hardly touched upon the breadth and depth of the different worlds of gaming exploration. On my own shelves there are entire worlds penned by passionate individuals. Whilst some strike me as juvenile, others come with gravity. Some are highly deriviative and others innovative, some mundane and other exotic. Whilst I may admire some, and loathe others, I can never doubt the author's own passionate effort at exploration and creation – for better or for worse in terms of the final product. Arguably it is from the sheer range of such material that the most impressive work can be distinguished.

Hot Gossip: Industry News

by Wu Mingshi

Hosei bo, Mr. Lev,

So double issue again, so double news from Mingshi, lah? How I write industry news when news is stale like old kaya toast.

Suay for World of Darkness MMO when Eve Online company CCP cancel. Not good for 56 staff, all lose job. Mingshi hear that for many month CCP all kiasu, so now no game. Hey CCP, maybe release what you done? Many World of Darkness programmers, Mingshi think. Maybe they finish project, meh? Or you dog in manger stop horse eating hay?

Voting for Ennie Awards open now (http://www.ennie-awards.com/vote/[3]). So many good games, which to choose? Fate? Numenara? Shadowrun? Next year maybe even better, Esoterrorists has new edition and four times longer, so this must be conspiracy for Mingshi to play more GUMSHOE. But no gum on shoe here, big ban from Guhmen, only special doctor allow. No paan either and that much worse.

Shane Hensley make interesting and strange game, East Texas University for Savage Worlds. Not like National University, students have party, go on dates, and worry about demonic books, garang ghosts, students all gone-case! Two books so far, East Texas University and Degrees of Horror. First book is rules and setting, second book is "Point Plot Campaign".

New superhero game Valiant Universe RPG from Catalyst Games now available. Name not quite right or maybe satire? Mingshi zai satire! Very thin edge between hero and villain in Valiant Universe. Evil Hat make new setting for Fate name Atomic Robo RPG. It includes super science atomic robots! Actually, it use Atomic Robo comics by Brian Clevinger and Scott Wegener.

Engine Publishing release fifth book for GMs, with title 'Unframed: The Art of Improvisation for Game Masters' and selling like chwee kueh and chilli. 'Unframed' has many essays by famous game writers like Robin D. Laws, Jennell Jaquays, Jason Morningstar, Jess Hartley, and more.

You say next issue special for D&D? Here that make confusion, we say D&D for company 'Dinner and Dance' always with lucky draw. Maybe Mingshi take d20 to D&D for lucky draw? Meanwhile no D&D movie, Sweetpea have license for movie and want Warner Brothers, Hasbro want Universal. Not happy, talk outside, mah?

'Internal Correspondence' issue 84 say Pathfinder remains #1 roleplaying game for "Fall 2013". Next place in horse race is Star Wars, then Fate Core, Dungeons & Dragons, and in fifth place "Iron Kingdoms". Also say hobby games market increase 20% in 2013, follow 15% increase in 2012. Market double since 2008! Although this most collectible card games and board games.

Tadashi Ehara Interview

with Tadashi Ehara

Originally an editor at Chaosium, Ehara is best known for his work on Chaosium's gaming magazine, Different Worlds which ran from 1979 to 1987. In the latter part of his time as editor, Different Worlds was published through Slueth Publications (issue 39-46), and the final issue (47) in May 1987 by Different Worlds Publications. Recently Tadashi has released through Different Worlds Publications two gaming-related publications relating to feudal Japan.

Welcome to RPG Review, Tadashi. You will be pleased to know that we consider 'Different Worlds' to be one of our inspiring magazines, and of course, the namesake of this issue. Could you tell us how you introduced to roleplaying games, and what those first experiences were like?

My first role-playing game was the D&D white box set back in the late 1970s. I was immediately fascinated by the books and the possibilities. I loved the games, but never played regularly until the past few years. I the early days, Dave Hargrave and Dave Arneson lived in the Bay Area, but I never played in their campaigns. I was a big fan, of course, but I was too busy publishing and managing Chaosium business, and I only played in a few play-testing sessions.

'Different Worlds' ran for almost eight years, and it remains the work that you are most well-known for. In the first issue your editorial said 'One of the many purposes of Different Worlds; is to get all the role-playing gamers together and to facilitate a means for the game designers and the GMs to communicate with them'. How well do you think the publication succeeded in that objective?

Very well, I think, based on the kind comments I still get to this day. It was the only place role-playing game designers of all genres published articles on what they thought personally about role-playing and what gamemasters should keep in mind while running games.

There was also quite a few famous names that graced the pages; not only through the classic 'My Life and Roleplaying' interviews, but also early works by people such as Larry DiTillio (executive story editor of the science-fiction series Babylon 5), and illustrator Steve Purcell (who did the Sam and Max series). Good talent spotting on your part? How did you find your contributors?

Initially, to get submissions, I invited all the authors who have published role-playing games up until then to contribute a "My Life and Role-Playing" article. The response was great, and got the magazine rolling. I got a personal letter from Gary Gygax declining to participate, and ironically I never got an ML&RP article from Greg Stafford.

Back then, "Empire of the Petal Throne" was the only published campaign world description worth mentioning. "Blackmoor" and "Greyhawk" only described a few locations, and were not really campaign descriptions, they were mostly added rules for D&D. So I individually asking the designers to describe the campaign world they were running. I believe Marc Miller's article in Different Worlds #9 was the first place an overall description of his campaign world of The Imperium was ever published. Likewise for campaign worlds of Dave Hargrave, Ed Simbalist, Ken St. Andre, and B. Dennis Sustare.

Once Different Worlds had published a few issues, submissions arrived regularly, and I never had a problem having enough good articles to publish
in each issue. Artists especially clamored to be published in Different Worlds. I mean, a Frank Frazetta cover? I did not solicit that, it was offered to me.In issue 39 of 'Different Worlds' your editorial says that the decision to change publisher from Chaosium to Sleuth was 'entirely my responsibility' and based on a decision to move back to San Francisco. Yet in other sources I have read that Chaosium was in financial difficulties at the time. So did you jump, were you pushed, or was there a bit of both? Also, what happened to Sleuth publications? By the last issue you had parted company.

Money was always tight at Chaosium. I was getting married and moving back to San Francisco. Sleuth Publication was located in San Francisco. They had published a successful main-stream Sherlock Holmes game and had offered me a job. It seemed like a good opportunity and I was burning out trying manage Chaosium's cash flow, so I moved on. I was not pushed, Chaosium was disappointed to see me go.

As it turned out, Sleuth was terribly managed. Sleuth had a bad relationship with one of the bigger distributors of Different Worlds, and when the magazine moved over to Sleuth, the distributor declined to continue selling it. Sleuth's cash flow, however, was really good at times. Their "Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective" game-in-a-binder consistently sold well. It was used as a contributor bonus by PBS stations all over the country when they had pledge nights that coincided with a new "Sherlock Holmes" series that they were promoting. Australia, Germany, and especially Japan published their versions in their respective countries, and sent royalty checks to Sleuth. Waldenbooks ordered thousands of copies for their stores. But Sleuth eventually put the game in a box, making it no longer the "Sherlock Holmes game that comes in a binder," and eventually even did a book version. They blew all the money on various projects that did not pan out and eventually went out of business. They had published only two supplements for SHCD, and lost a franchise opportunity.

Different Worlds Publications produced a release of the classic and exotic game Empire of the Petal Throne, plus a couple of supplements. These were in 1987 and 1988. The next publication was the Blackwatch Technical Reference Manual, a science fiction roleplaying game in 1988. After that it wasn't until 2004 that we saw more publications, being a scenario, a setting, and a d20 rewrite of an AD&D scenario. That's a lot time between drinks; what was happening then?

I left active gaming to raise a family and work in hi-tech. I have a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from UC Berkeley, so I worked in Silicon Valley to support my wife and four kids. Any spare time I had, I played PC games. "Civilization" is my favorite computer game. If I would ever design a computer game, "Civilization" would be it.

Most recently, there have been publications on Japan's transition through feudalism to modernity with the generic supplements (i.e., Gamers Guide to Feudal Japan: Daimyo of 1867, 2010 and Gamers Guide to Feudal Japan: Shogun & Daimyo, 2011). Can you tell us more about these? Will we see more publications of a similar nature?
Well, I thought it was time to author my own books, and logic said I should write about what I knew more than anyone else in the hobby, and that was feudal Japan. I am not a game designer so I wrote reference books for gamers interested in designing campaigns based in Japan during the time of the samurai. The first book, "Daimyo of 1867," took seven months to publish, "Shogun & Daimyo" took 14 months.

It is generally not a good idea to talk about ongoing projects until they are near publication. After my second book, I started work on a third, but after a year the project became too big and unwieldy. I have to rethink and figure out a new format before I can get back into it.

Finally, what do you think the future is of roleplaying adventure games? How is the computerisation and Internet affecting the hobby and how will it do so in the future?

If I had stayed with Chaosium, I believe we would be more involved in computer games today. They have licensed out "Call Of Cthulhu" computer
games, and that should be fine.

Tabletop role-playing games may perhaps provide the ultimate cooperative gaming experience. It is inherently different from computer games. There is something infectious about getting a bunch of gamers together to play face-to-face cooperatively and meet regularly to play in a campaign.
Tabletop RPGs serve a different market than computer RPGs. May they both prosper.

The hobby needs a good universal system that all gamers can use. I think "Pathfinder" is doing the best job. I now play in three regularly-run campaigns based on that system.

There is still room for innovation. Especially with regards to playaids. But that is a big subject, suitable for a separate article. If Different Worlds was still in publication, I would publish that article.

Origins of Mundus

by Ville Huohvanainen

Mundus RPG is an Asian themed fantasy tabletop RPG. Drawing inspiration from Japanese history, myths, anime and manga, Mundus RPG is played in the land of Tentaika - a realm filled with samurais, demons, political intrigue and epic adventure. The game system uses six-sided dice. The deep and interesting combat driven game system creates exciting and lethal challenges throughout all stages of gameplay.

Key features:

Diverse Character Creation
* Build your character using the Life Module System or by point-buy system
* Life Module System defines your character's childhood and upbringing creating a rich and interesting history
* Endless different combinations for character creation to maximize the game's life cycle

Detailed and diverse Combat System
* The detailed battle system offers satisfying gameplay from mundane samurai duels to epic anime style battles between powerful demigods
* The Channeling System allows players to use diverse tactics in combat
* Create your unique fighting style by combining various options from mystical arcane arts or spiritual power (Genki) to overpowering your enemies with pure samurai skills
* The 5 second battle turns create a variety of options for each combat sequence

Awe-inspiring Land of Tentaika
* 8 prefectures, 5 casts, 3 planes, 10 Gods, several factions, one shogun
* Pseudo-Japanese world with a system that supports all kinds of anime inspired gaming you can imagine
* Ready made characters and monsters with rich backgrounds

At the time of writing this it has been roughly two months since Mundus RPG was finished. After almost 3 years of development this two months has given us a chance to step back a bit and take a look at our game from a different perspective. The finished game is definitely nothing like what we thought it would be when we started working on it. For us the biggest thing is probably the scale of the project, as it grew from a small weekend project to a released 400 page book. Even though there are still things we would have liked to work on, and there would probably be until the end of the world, the game still became something larger and definitely better than we ever hoped it could be.

--- NOTE: The first chapter is kind of an intro for the main text and thus it has a bit of a different feel compared to the main part of the text, thus putting a pic here to separate it from the main text a bit would not be a bad idea

It all begun as a short weekend project to create a simple post-apocalyptic fantasy game with elements from acrobatic wuxia combat. However when we started we didn’t anticipate that our little project would live through the next week and beyond.

The post-apocalyptic theme quickly faded away as we started fleshing out the world of Mundus. Most of the early development centered on creating a rule system for the core elements of the game.

We draw most of our inspiration from obvious sources such as samurai and wuxia movies, sh?nen anime (Bleach, Dragon Ball etc.) and video games such as Jade Empire. As a funny fact we had never played fantasy tabletop RPGs before making Mundus RPG. One reason for making Mundus RPG in the first place was that we didn’t find a fantasy tabletop RPG which would have suited our taste.

One of the first core elements we designed was channeling. The channeling arts were the center of the combat system from the beginning. The concept of channeling was originally centered on two “elements”. These black and white facets of channeling represented the offensive and defensive aspects of the art, however these were soon replaced by the two skills that are in the finished game. These skills represent the character’s ability to control his life force inside and outside of his body. The design process of channeling faced balancing problems as the skill is extremely powerful. We intentionally left this imbalance in the game as we thought that it would only reflect the reality that a fighter who can boost his speed, strength and movements past human limits for a short period of time would have a clear advantage in small scale combat.

From the beginning we wanted to center our rules around combat. This in mind we left the rules for social interaction very simple and the idea is that social interaction should be actually roleplayed instead of just rolling dice to decide the outcome.The combat rules were in a constant state of change throughout the development process. One of the few things that has remained the same from the day one is the 2d6 dice system. In the end our combat system ended up being detailed and slow paced. As such, it is best suited for 1vs1 to 3vs3 battles.

The design process of the lore started off by drawing rough versions of the most important maps and creating the rules of the universe and the deciding on the origin of the planes of existence. The lore for the game was developed through constant discussions between the designers about the world, the rules of the universe and politics of different in-game factions and a large part of the lore was also created by playing the game. As we had our development play sessions we would stop to discuss the lore every now and then. We usually tried to leave the minor things to be decided outside our play sessions but in the end we usually didn’t. This has led to us having a large collection of minor lore that has been designed unnecessarily deeply.

We were lucky that we had many friends who were interested in playing role-playing games. We hosted weekly sessions of Mundus RPG during the whole development process and we had our own weekly developer sessions. We also had many chances to play the game with players who were new to traditional tabletop role-playing.

Mundus was in development for roughly 2 years and 7 months. The book was put together during the last 6 months of development and during these 6 months our development team was increased to 4 members from the original two designers. In addition to two designers our team had one artist and layout designer. Earlier in the project we also received some funding which we used to order creature art from an artist we know.

--- NOTE: The last chapter is kind of an outro for the main text and thus it has a bit of a different feel compared to the main part of the text, thus putting a pic here to separate it from the main text a bit would not be a bad idea

When looking back at the last three years or so it is hard to believe what we managed to achieve. Designing a game of this size with just two people is not something a sane person would knowingly decide on and getting the book done without the irreplaceable help from our layout designer and artist would have been borderline impossible. It was not only once or twice that we thought that we would never get the game done and released but here we are. Retrospectively it is easy to say what we could have done better and as such this project has been a great learning experience but most importantly for us these past years are definitely unforgettable.

Vanguard Designer's Notes

by Tim Westhaven

What is VANGUARD?

Vanguard is a science-fantasy game in the vein of high flung space opera. I’ve called it a juncture between Mass Effect and Wind in the Willows. It came about as a science-fiction setting that would engage and be accessible to my 6yr old son and he has had a large input in ensuring that the rules are clear, concise and engaging; but I’ve worked hard to make sure that experienced gamers will still enjoy and be challenged, and the feedback and experience I’ve had so far has been excellent.

This isn’t a simple monster mash or dungeon bash game, and the rules cover complex concepts such as fly-wi (on the fly wireless) hacking of computer systems, starship design and combat, research and development of equipment upgrades (or power-ups) and social interaction and esperence (psionics).

Aside from the core mechanics the game has its own setting. Based around the planet Ashen, which is much like earth, there are no humans but branches of the evolutionary tree that include pawed mammals and reptiles have resulted in sentient, bipedal species; evolved from many kinds of animals that we know such as mice, rabbits, badgers, moles, squirrels, bears, lizards, foxes and many more. These species have their own cultures their own civilizations and their own detailed histories.

Design features

Philosophy
The idea behind VANGUARD is accessible, adaptable and fun. If a 7yr old can create a character, understand that character’s role, represent that character and get comfortable with the rules over a few hours of play – and if an experienced player can pick up the game, like the mechanics, like the setting and both have an amazing game experience then I will have accomplished what I set out to do.

I’m not trying to break the mould with VANGUARD, I’m not trying to create the be all of science fantasy games, I’m trying to create a fun game that young and old gamers can enjoy together and create memorable characters and stories within.

Modular design

Because I set out to make a game that was accessible to young (7+) and old gamers alike I knew that some things would need to grow with the player as their sophistication grew, that the game had to support complex ideas that older players would expect and that learning gamers would demand later on. So VANGUARD was built with many more advanced rules being modular and able to be substituted or inserted as the GM saw fit. But such modular rules were kept to subjects that were not essential to the game, but were provided to add flavour, a more realistic feel or satisfy the need for more complex interactions within the game environment.

A simple example is damage and healing. In the basic version character’s with no health left are not considered dead, just incapacitated/unconscious; a situation that can be easily remedied with the use of medical nanobots or a friend giving first aid, but also a character who is unconscious gets to roll a luck check each round to see if they recover – meaning that they were indeed only winded or knocked unconscious in battle and have come-too. This was to protect young players from the devastating loss of their character as well as giving them a round to round action to try to recover – thereby keeping them in the game. But this rule can easily be substituted for a more experienced and lethal version, where the downed character has a number of rounds in which to receive treatment or face death. The key here, as with the rest of the game, was to make sure that young players weren’t made to feel that they fail or had no hope of success but that there was always a chance they could do the impossible.

Base mechanics

The base mechanics of VANGUARD are simple yet versatile and make use of attributes, skillsets and equipment. Dice are limited to D6 as these are commonly available and numerically low for accessibility for younger players.
The attributes are linked to the skillsets, but not limited to them. So for example the piloting skillset is linked to the action attribute, but a character might be looking to understand how an enemy pilot is going to react to a certain tactic, and in this the GM may suggest the character uses their Senses attribute combined with their Pilot skillset instead of Action.

This ability to mix and match the seven attribute and sixteen skillsets means that the character and the GM have a broad range of roleplaying options, and also means that there are multiple ways of addressing a problem or situation which favours different characters.

The feedback I’ve had from game testers has only highlighted that the system supports complex interactions, whether they be physical, mental, social or critical (such as combat) and that the straight forward nature of the base mechanic is a real draw card for many players.

One of the things I love about the mechanics is that there are stepped critical successes and failures and that players receive xp rewards for both, meaning that they learn from their mistakes, not just their successes.

Combat

While combat is handled in a traditional round based manner the order of action is fluid based on initiative, which also determines the number of tasks a character can perform in one round.

Movement is not limited to a number but rather a difficulty, based on the character’s movement value the GM decides how far/what movement action the character can perform in the time permitted and the number of tasks used. This has caused some controversy as some players would prefer a hard quantified distance they can travel based on their movement allowance, but I find the difficulty based system much more narrative and less like having a game of chess.
An attack can be defended against without the cost of a task and combat is relatively fast with damage being decisive given that a non-hit point based system is used. However the damage and health mechanic means that dying is quite difficult, unless all character’s are knocked unconscious or a character is alone and has no means of receiving aid.

Computer hacking

I think this is one of the system mechanics I’m not only most proud of but in love with. I’ve played so many cyberpunk systems where hacking is not only laborious but really rips the party apart as the hacker deals with their side of things and the other characters either have to wait it out or suffer the split party time frame. In VANGUARD hacking runs alongside the combat rules, you can hack on the fly during combat as an action. But it isn’t just a one shot wins it all, networks are still technical, running various programs, sub-routines and defence and attack arrays that can all scupper a hacker’s chances of success.

But the hacking rules are light, fast and above all, fun. I took a lot of inspiration not only from the Mass Effect AI hacking using the omnitool but also from Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell, manga and the hacking and computer node structure in VANGUARD shows a lot of the speed, versatility and effectiveness of these influences.
Want to hack an enemies defence turret and turn it against them? No problem. Hack an enemies power armour suit to lock up their hydraulics? Yep, you can do it – even hacking an opponent’s cyberbrain and using them as a puppet? Sure – if you’re good enough.

In the game tests this has been one of the great victories of the system, with even the youngest of players (6yr) not only understanding the concepts but using the system effectively.

Esperence (Psionics)

While not essential I wanted to have the option for psionics, the ability for the individual to have a mind so attuned that they could conquer the universe itself. The mechanics of esperence are just as simple as the rest of the game, but esperence is a binary condition – you either have the ability or you don’t, and if you have it you can use it.
This makes the use of esperence immensely powerful. Even a basic esper can have terrifying power, but there are limits and also the ability to expand an esper’s talents and refine their skill in their known abilities.

In VANGUARD esperence is a known science and anyone can go and study to become an esper, unlock their hidden potential, but there is a limit to what abilities can be learnt and while a powerful esper can stand against even a mech their mental and physical limits provide a counterpoint to this power.

Starship design and combat

VANGUARD will have its own starship design mechanics and combat. My son and I are very visual people and we like to see a battle play out on the table top so there are rules for how the ships work internally as well as externally and the rules are in place for whether a GM wishes to play any space confrontation purely on a narrative basis or if they want to have the ships flying around the table in dogfights and engaged in ship to ship conflict.

There are unique ships and weapons in the VANGUARD universe and we’re looking at rules that will really bring to the fore the idea of large starship combat on a par with fleet combat of the 17th and 18th century where boarding a ship was preferable to scuttling it, taking the ship, cargo, provisions, salvage.

These rules aren’t finalised yet, they’re still in development and playtesting and the design philosophy of the game as a whole must be carried through to these rules as well. I would love it if a 7yr old felt just as comfortable building their own ship design as an experienced player, this is extremely difficult given that I also want the ship systems and components to be modular and affected by a ship’s power supply and size.

This sort of thing is easy to fudge but I want a design system that’s fun and engaging to mess around with, to test out new designs and, to some degree, for those who are interested, to experiment looking for the best design they can.

Mining, salvage and power-ups

We’re including rules for mining resources from planets and asteroids, these resources can then be traded, refined and sold. Additionally there are rules for salvage, and salvage can then be used in building new things, whether it’s bits of equipment or whole starships. This allows the players the option of being merchants, miners, engineers, traders, freelance salvage crew, ‘roid jockeys and even planet scouts looking for new rich caches of natural resources.

But the other thing the VANGUARD universe has allows for the creation of power-ups. These are unique add-ons that character’s design themselves and manufacture themselves for specific pieces of equipment. So you could create a thermal enhancement for your optics or a modification to your rebreather allowing you to breath underwater like a fish drawing oxygen straight from the water.

The character’s must find salvage and other unique parts that they then use in a design of their choosing and either manufacture the power-up themselves or find someone else to.

Experience and teamwork

Teamwork was an important part of what VANGAURD wanted to be. There had to be clear benefits to working as a team and in providing support to your party members. These are worked into the mechanics of the game.

As mentioned above character’s earn experience points not only for great successes but also abject failure and earning experience is a team matter, if one character earns experience the entire team does. So in helping your teammate succeed your increasing your own chances of success.

The setting

On the planet Ashen the nutwerks, hoppolites, molen, badgerians and mausers came together in peace to be prosperous. Despite their cultural, racial and ideological differences their peace and prosperity lasted centuries and united they formed the confederation.

The heart of the confederation was the world capital Varmisk a city both grand in scale and great in culture and while there were always struggles and tensions within the confederation in the end it was not from within that destruction came.
When the Tanarii came, they came with a thunderclap and struck at the heart of Varmisk and in that great city what hundreds of years had built was undone in a matter of days. The inhabitants of the city fled and arguments long thought forgotten have begun once more.

But not everyone is willing to see the dreams of a peaceful future disappear in fire and dust...

The first thing that everybody notices is that VANGUARD is anthropomorphic characters. The main reason for this was because of my son’s love of such settings as Redwall, Mouseguard and TMNT.

The world of Ashen has a developed history and the species have their own cultures, their own histories and their own politics.
Three branches of the evolution tree developed into sentient races. These three branches are the varmint (including the five confederated species), the pretadors and the reptyles.

Without going into too much of the setting background the varmint species eventually gained homelands and broke free of constant pretador and reptyle attacks.

Within the varmint species (other than the five) there is plenty of scope to play most other small mammals; including possums, chipmunks, hedgehogs, etc.

The pretador species are a broad group that include many of the species that people have been asking about; otters, weasels, ferrets, wolverines, foxes and wolves and some feline types (you may notice the absence of dogs and cats - for good reason). The most infamous of the pretadors (although also the least in number) are the howlers , terrifying pretadors, well known for their intelligence as well as their habits for slavery, blood sports and carnivorous appetites. They always travel in packs following the strongest of their brood and while they have a code of honour it is full of caveats and loopholes that only a howler would know. There are infamous pretadors, known as Wolven, giant fierce beasts that hold a special place in varmint myths and legends, most say the wolven long since died out but rumours from the far south of eastern pretador, near the jungles of Arika, tell of giant, hellish beasts that some say could be none other than Wolven - if the rumours are true...

And lastly the reptyle species; the oldest cultures on Ashen and perhaps, as far as the varmint species are concerned, the cruellest. The reptyle species include lizard and serpent anthros (and a number of amphibians). While there are snakes amongst the reptyles species they are kept as almost demi-gods, fed on fresh mausers or hoppolites, and listened to as interpreters to the reptyles gods.

There are 'upraised' canine and feline species (woofers and felin) but these have very special rolls within the vanguard universe which will become apparent later.

I don't intend building species information for every ammal/canine/feline/reptyle there is. I think there will probably be a few major ones covered in the core book and maybe some guidelines for building others, so that if GMs want a specific 'race' they can write it up themselves. I have a short list, mostly compiled by my son's favourites (and a few of my own) that I'll try to get around to but for now just focusing on the confederation.

Gaming World Cosmology

by Lev Lafayette

An opening section of Rolemaster's much-overlooked Campaign Law argues: "Before constructing the physical world the GM should decide what sort of god, gods, and/or demigods there will be, if any. The nature of these deities, and any interplanetary factors should bes established so that the GM can gauge their involvement in the formation and operation of the world." This isn't quite accurate of course; many roleplaying campaigns are run and some even to conclusion with only the barest reference of such cosmological principles. Many and varied "real world" campaigns serve as a case in point. But it is true that a roleplaying campaign can acquire a greater level of consistency, especially on the epic scale, when they are considered.

As Campaign Law implied (even if in reverse order) there is really one matter of primary consideration; to what level do supernatural events occur, i.e, does the universe have an religious cosmology as well as a physical cosmology? If there are none, move on. If there are some, at some point in the story the narrator will have to decide why there are supernatural events and from what source. Of course, if there are supernatural aspects to a gameworld, the decision may be forced quite early; it is very dangerous to be an atheist in a world where there are active and interventionist gods! Otherwise it is easy enough in a mainstream agnostic story to run any number of sessions without reference to cosmological principles. It is much less so where magic is known, and almost impossible where it is common. It should be mentioned even in the physicalist "real world" campaigns there are sometimes hints towards this; the usually fairly physicalist GURPS makes reference to "wizards of modern Alabama" - and Steve Jackson is not talking about the Klan - in its reputation section, and also the use of Magical Aptitude in the same time and place.

Despite the protests of some theists and some atheists, in the real world we simply cannot determine for sure whether there are supernatural events. No miracles have been really proven to the rigorous requirements to satisfy empirical, oberved, and repeatable evidence of such events, whilst at the same time subjective experiences, whilst claimed to be empirical, are certainly not subject to repeatibility or necessarily observation. Nevertheless it is possible to give philosophically grounded speculative notions of what supernatural cosmologies could be applied, which are tied to the pragmatic worlds of empirical experience. Firstly, and most obviously, is the physicalist metaphysic, the claim that the underlying reality of the universe is matter and energy. Secondly, is the classic opposition of metaphysical idealism, the claim that the underlying reality of the universe is in fact, a mental construct. The third, and a more innovative approach from this author, is to speculative on a metaphysic that the underlying nature of the universe is actually linguistically mediated, a symbolist approach if you will. It is important of course to realise that empirical experiences can be interpreted equally well with each of these approaches; James Jeans, the British astronomer, physicist, and mathematician – the first to suggest steady-state theory in cosmology – once argued that “the Universe begins to look more like a great thought than like a great machine."

Quite often there are attempts to combine a high degree of physical realism with the addition of magic as another force. This is quite common in a great variety of standard fantasy gameworlds. In Rolemaster's Shadow World the planet Kulthea - overwise described as a normal world that follows standard planetary physical rules - is "on the threshold of a radically different universe. The planet stands just outside the gateway to a plane of existence which has physical laws we can begin to understand... We have access to energies - flowing through this invisible and intangible corrido - which have no explanation... A few of us can even channel this power." It is acknolwedged that this also provided a sufficient and non-contradictory tie-in with ICE's space opera game, SpaceMaster.

For many fantasy campaigns however the sense of wonder of having a fantastic planet in the midst of a physical realistic universe is an uneasy union. It is far more common to find a fantastic world in a fantastic cosmology which includes physical worlds which have similar laws of nature as our own, except with magic appended. The cosmology of Dungeons & Dragons is perphaps one of the most well-known examples of this expression, especially through the elaborations in the Planescape and SpellJammer campaign supplements. First expressed in the appendix of the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook, the normal worlds are the Prime Material Planes which are co-existent with the ethereal and astral planes, with the latter connecting the inner planes of elemental nature, the positive and negative energy planes, and the outer planes of the various alignments and the deities.

Whilst relatively easy to introduce, the fantasy campaign of "physics plus" can run into problems. Whilst one may explain magic to justify why Terry Pratchett's Discworld has both gravity, an atmosphere, and a turtle that can swim through space (Great A'Tuin), four World Elephants (Tubul, Jerakeen, Berilia and Great T'Phon), a sun and moon which are within the confines of the world. More challenging work is required to consider who happens to various magical spells if they are to accord to normal physical laws. Consider a staple feature of magic (or magic-like abilities, such as The Force in the Star Wars universe); the casting of a lightning or electricity bolt underwater. What happens? Does it move like it would through air? Does it disperse? What about a fireball? What about light-based spells, where the refraction index is different? Do sound-based spells work better? Hand-waving all consideration with "it's magic, they act like normal" can be unsatisfying because of a general sense that the environment and the magic should interact.

The Palladium Rifts setting (the "Megaverse") has received a great deal of attention for providing a wild combination arising from "tears in the fabric of space and time" and a massive nuclear war for good measure where lines of magic energy provide opportunities to bring in all sorts of bug-eyed aliens, augmented humans fighting each other and other-dimensional beings. However the game has received some criticism - to put it mildly - for a lack of attention in game balance. A comparison can be made with West End Games' Torg, which was released in the same year. Also multi-genre, Torg provided demarcated regions (fantasy, high-tech, pulp era) each with their own "axioms" which defined capabilities.

An early version of a strong demarcation of co-existence was RuneQuest and the gameworld of Glorantha, where mana was described as being to the spirit world as matter was to the physical world. A character's POWer attribute represented their ability to accumulate manner and manipulate it using spells. Most importantly, as the title indicated, the runes as physical and material, encapsulated the founding blocks of the universe with plenty of debates and claims of "first rune". Since the introduction of Time, the various conflicts between the Gods has been fought by proxy with heroes going on extraplanar heroquests to both discover cult secrets and to assert their mythological interpretation over the world. Comparison can also be made with another famous Chaosium and BRP-derived game setting, being Stormbringer/Elric, Hawkmoon etc - the Eternal Champion series from Michael Moorcock's novels where the multidimensional science fantasy universe involves a constant conflict between metaphysical Law and Chaos, with Balance somehow managing to succeed with its various champions.

Perhaps even more extreme, at least in terms of metaphysical foundation, is the world according to the White Wolf game Mage : The Ascension (and subsequent incarnations). In this case the typical scientific world view is inversed entirely, Instead of a consenus of symbolic values signifying reality, the consensus is reality itself - change the consensus or use the force of will and reality itself changes. If one asserts their will too strongly, and this is witnessed as being contrary to the consensus by others, paradox occurs resulting in madness. A similar concept (and unsurpising given the publishing lineage) can be found in the third edition of Ars Magica, where "True Reason" stands in contrast to the magical expressions. Unpopular with Ars Magica players, it was dropped in later editions.

Whilst these are clearly fantatical games, it is possible, if played with due diligence to play some others as a type of magical realism. This is a preferred genre for yours truly, and represents where realism and the fantastic co-exist in an environment which is natural and surreal. It is usually not explicitly and obviously fantastic, but rather such features constantly gnaw at the edges. To quote Jameson in his classic essay on magic realism in film: "... not a realism to be transfigured by the 'supplement' of a magical perspective but a reality which is already in and of itself magical and fantastic". Over The Edge is a classic example of such a game and possibly Nephilim and Unknown Armies as well, although they can be a little too obviously magical. In some cases it is possible to play Call of Cthulhu as well in such a manner, although the dramatic and sudden appearance of the monstrous breaks the psychological uncanniness into horror science fiction - even when the setting is medieval, Victorian, or Interwar.

It shouldn't be assumed however that such extraordinary settings are soley the domain of the fantastic; it is also quite possible to place them within the speculative. For example, to take one of the more exotic planetary options from GURPS Space, the idea of the sapient planet, or at the very least a panpsychic sapient eco-system. This can includes worlds covered by a single immense organism (such as in the famous Lem story, Solaris) or, as an alternative, a hive mind. Lifeforms from earth itself give some indication of plausibility of even extreme forms in this direction; biologists were very surprised to discover in 2000 and 2012 that certain forms of brainless slime moulds were, respectively, solving mazes and using extracellular slime to navigate. Perhaps more interesting as some of the challenges that arise in the philosophy of physics, such as the nature of space and time (is time travel possible? how? what about paradoxes?), and the various interpretations that come from trying to understand the counter-intuitive results from quantum mechanics.

It may be assumed that much of this can be avoided in a low-powered campaign, and indeed this is so. Even in seting where there is magic or pseudo-science (e.g., psionics) it is not necessary to delve into the depths of cosmology if the situations experienced remain relatively low-key. If the game system rules are precise it is possible to play the game with the setting and system as writ, without ever having to even hint at what the underlying foundations of the setting's universe actually is. For example, a low-medium powered RuneQuest Glorantha game where characters may even reach a beginning level Rune Lord or Rune Priest level are unlikely to ever have to worry about such things, despite the fact that the world is explicitly magical and with a magical cosmology, because the rules are so well-defined of how the magical system works. The same can be said with the various implementations of games set in Tolkien's Middle-Eatrh as well. However, when characters start reaching the meta-magical level (“how does this magic stuff work, anyhow?”) the big questions of cosmological engagement are going to be raised, especially where there are competing traditions and interpretations within the game world itself, a significant challenge for high powered Gloranthan games!

The reverse also applies however; one can have a relatively low-powered game, but where the cosmological interest is turned up quite high. Nobody is going to accuse the relatively simple-minded Brutha from Terry Pratchett's Discworld of being a particularly powerful individual. Indeed, to use the GURPS language, with the single exception of Eidetic Memory, he is carrying quite a range of disadvantages, not least being his complete inability to be deceptive. However, as a rare and genuine believer he can talk to his god and his god talks back. The fact he is the only real believer in a religious empire is why the god has taken earthly form as a turtle and with much reduced powers. The questions of cosmological principles are raised relatively early; The Discworld gods receive their powers because their worshippers believe in them. There is an astouding scene in the story where the protagonists discover a ruined temple, home to the ghosts of old gods who are no longer believed. One describes how great temples and sacrifices were carried out for them as they were the god of a mighty empire – but they couldn't remember their own name. An important issue is that the gods of Discworld only have power within Discworld. The famous Turtle is independent, as is presumably anything extra-Turtle. This does raise an important recursive issue in establishing any cosmological principle, either the boundaries are going to have to be limits or it will be prone to endless recursion (“Yeah? Who created the god of creation, eh?”)

It may be unavoidable that an epic collaborative story is going to be generated at some point this is going to deals with fundamental concepts of the game-universe but so can smaller scale stories. It is a lot easier, for the sake of narrative consistency, that the cosmological principles for the story are determined or at least put ias an emergent property, an earlier in the piece rather than later. To conclude with an example, I was developed a world which I wanted to be very scientific in terms of geography, geology, planetology, etc but also with the typical tropes of spell-casting. Unbeknownest to the players, the world history included a precursor advanced species which left various "nodes" of power throughout the land, which were sites of known magical power. These were actually voice-activated nano-technology factories. When the right commands were issued - in the archiac language - the nano-bots would go out and do their caster's bidding. The more people involved (such as in a ritual) the more nanobots were called forth to action. Thus a a standard fantasy world was created but with the potential revelation of the scientific foundations - at least to the players if not the characters - of their world. Certainly not everyone's ideal setting, but at least one which was consistent.

Twenty Amazing Game Worlds

by Lev Lafayette

There are numerous gameworlds on the market in which to generate a story with your favourite game system. The following are twenty examples of gameworlds which are amazing in themselves, with the requirement that they were published as roleplaying settings first rather than adaptions by RPGs from other sources (thus, no Middle Earth, Pendragon, Star Wars, Star Trek, Cthulhu, Discworld). They are not necassarily something that everyone will enjoy because to an extent each have jarring and alien elements. Many of course contain numerous features which make accessible and normal to expectations, but have depth, variety, and style which makes them unusual, interesting, and very much worth playing out one's stories in. It's also probably worth mentioning that give a one year game-story, assuming a session per week, there's at least twenty years of gaming here.

20. Mystara

The official campaign world for Dungeons & Dragons BEMC edition, Mystara was first shown in the scenario, “The Isle of Dread” in 1981 as the “Known World”. After the release of this scenario came several scenario and campaign packs, include the much-sought after Gazetteers, which elaborated the setting according to region. It was a traditional Tolkienesque-medieval fantasy world, with humans, elves, dwarves, orcs, and dragons, and was really an easy path for those who were familiar with such fantasy novels to be introduced to roleplaying games.

So what makes Mystara amazing? Firstly there is the detail and scope of the Gazetteers which really set up a wide range of cultural analogues and regional political machinations. Secondly, there is the quirkly feature that world is roughly equivalent to Earth's geography c135 million years ago. Thirdly – and it is readily admitted, not always included in people's own games – there is an extensive underworld or “Hollow World” sub-setting, where an Immortal has set up a region as a refuge of for creatures on the verge of extinction.

19. 2300AD

Derived from the results of an enormous geo-political wargame, 2300AD is a setting where humanity's technology is just beginning to push the edges of interstellar space to a distance of some 40 light years. The nation-state is still dominant which, to everyone's surprise except their own, the French are dominant having escaped most of the effects of a nuclear conflict. Other powers include the United Kingdom, Manchuria, Germany, and an Australian-US alliance, each of whom control a range of planets or "arms". The Manchurian arm suffers insurgents, the American arm has reached a dead-end, and the French arm, a site of major conflict, has encountered the bug-like Kafers, an aggressive species determined to push into humanity's space. In addition to the Kafers other alien species discovered include the Pentapods, an amphibious and genetic-engineered species, the Klaxun, primitive walking "trees", among others.

If all this sounds like 19th century imperialism in space, you'd be right. One wouldn't be too wrong in the assertion that the Kafer are the equivalent of space orcs, a typically opponent, an opponent that is morally untroubling to kill (they're described as "implacable, violent, frightening"). But this aside, where 2300 really shines in a setting is in the general theme of exploration and alien encounters, with a modicum of action and intrigue, with a technology that is not too far removed from current conceptions.

18. Shadow World

Originally represented by some impressively detailed regional books (The Iron Wind (1980), Vog Mur (1984), Cloudlords of Tanara (1984)), as the Loremaster series, along with the licensed (and rare) Shade of the Sinking Plain (1984), before the 1989 publication of the Shadow World World Atlas First Edition placed those settings as part of a campaign world with a subsequent twenty or so regional and scenario publications, along with other supplements. Whilst originally designed for Rolemaster, Shadow World publications also included for a while dual statistic blocks for the Hero System whilst the two companies were associated.

Whilst Shadow World does contain some relatively unexciting species which are close the Tolkienesque representations (e.g., Orc equivalents, Dwarves, Elves etc), the setting itself is very interesting. In part it follows the representations of ordinary science; the planet Kultea is the seventh planet of a fifteen planet system, some 98 million miles from a G-type sun, with a circumference of 27000 miles, five moons, & etc. However, Kulthea is a planet that groans and creaks under significant seismic activity, and more importantly, is described as being on the threshold of a radically different universe, that baths the planet in energies that provide magical energy flows. Thus Kulthea becomes of place of high and wild fantastic powers, a place where the multitude of isolated cultures can significantly enormously in the technologies of science fantasy, with a multitude of magical elements, plants, and animals, gateway portals and specialist navigators, travel between the planets and planes, and interventionist deities and demons. If you're looking for a high magic campaign with science fantasy elements, Shadow World is an excellent choice.

17. Torg: The Possibility Wars

Originally a code-name for a new roleplaying system (The Other Roleplaying Game), Torg player characters take the role of "Storm Knights", attempting to prevent or at least control, the invasion of interdimensional invading forces, each of whom bring with them a set of rules about their reality, and which correspond with particular fictional genres. The original genre regions included Core Earth, The Living Land (a primitive-style, 'lost world' region including sapient saurians), Aysle (medieval-fantasy magical realm), the Cyberpapacy (cyberpunk with the inclusion of a theocratic rule and a powerful virtual reality), Nippon Tech (a high tech environment of corporate crime), The New Nile (1930s pulp-era combined with Ancient Egyptian magics, and weird science), and Orrosh (a Victorian-era tropical horror region).

Unashamedly cinematic in style and system, Torg multi-genre settings could provide difficulties as well as opportunities as PCs attempting to have the right range of abilities across the multiple regions. Due to the rules of each setting ("the Axioms") abilities, technologies, and concepts in one location could be next to useless in others (e.g., a rifle in the Living Land could be used as an unbalanced club, but not fire bullets). In many ways this was an excellent setting mechanic which demanded imagination from players to deal with their new circumstances.

As new supplmenets were released there was however a tendency towards power-creep, and comical humour. If this doesn't trouble a gaming group, that is fine, even if the humour borders on the ridiculous when confronted with the breakdown of reality! However other GMs will want to be extremely careful and review newer supplements with caution. Another issue worth noting is that the different realms have different aggregate values in their axioms, effectively making some regions more 'powerful' than others. Again, GMs may wish to review this as well. However with these caveats in place, Torg is a great multi-genre setting with a powerful campaign kick, and a great in-built limitations that help the narrative.

16. Perilous Lands

The default setting for Powers & Perils, a game system of occasional style but of an unnecessarily complex system, Perilous Lands is almost inevitably overlooked. The physical structure of the world is vaguely Afro-Eurasia, with a disproportionate "Siberia" and forested regions are particularly heavy in the "European" peninsula and in the far east with all climatic regions appropriately positioned. The boxed campaign set also comes with a culture book and a site book.

The culture book describes seventy-one cultures with each section providing a brief history, population, economy, religion, cultural personality, legal system, allies and enemies, and language. The cultures themselves are very roughly analoguous to earth cultures; sufficiently so to be familiar, sufficiently different to be exotic. The site book describes fifteen significant and powerful locations along with a section includes a section for setting up adventures, area summary descriptions, calendars, a glossary of the Gods, and cultural parameters. The site book also includes a summary of the national income, alignment, language, government type, and power of the various civilised states. Power is no mere abstract value either, but is rather derived from national income, size of army, navy and total population. Overall, Perilous Lands is the in style of an extended version of Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age with plenty of subtle yet powerful magical forces both constantly present yet even more powerful in the background. Think Conan, add more monsters, make it bigger, and turn it up.

15. Ravenloft

Existing as a "pocket dimension", or demi-plane, in the Dungeons & Dragons cosmology, and originally published as stand-alone adventure of the same name in 1983, and a sequel, The House on Gryphon Hill, in 1986, Ravenloft became it's own campaign setting with the publication of "Realms of Terror" in 1990, along with a very intriguing 1890s "Gothic Earth" setting entitled Masque of the Red Death in 1994. As a pocket dimension Ravenloft exists in its own location in space-time, with a realm consisting of pieces of other parts of the multiverse apparently brought together by undefined "dark powers" with regions controlled by powerful "dark lords". In the D&D 4th edition Manual of the Planes, the Domains of Dead are placed within Shadowfell, a parallel world adjacent to the prime material plane, not unlike the ethereal plane.

Whilst the gothic-horror style and themes from 19th century literature may seem to be an odd mix with the high-medieval fantasy typically used in Dungeons & Dragons, the setting works quite well. The lords of the various domains of Ravenloft are characters that have done some great evil, have been cursed, and are trapped on the pocket dimension. Two particularly impressive features about Ravenloft, apart from the basis of the setting is the different checks against the character's composure, and the corruption of characters. For the former characters are confronted with effectively new saving throws; fear, horror, and madness checks. For the latter, characters need to make power checks, based on any action that might be considered evil (e.g., assault, theft, lying, breaking an oath, etc). Failed power checks changes the character over time, in some case giving them new powers, but always at a cost. Fear, horror, madness, and the corruption of power - these are core themes in the evocative setting of Ravenloft which are built into the system.

14. Shadowrun

The unusual combination of fantasy and cyberpunk expressed in Shadowrun (1989) has come under some criticism, not the least by authors like William Gibson, who preferred cyberpunk remained unsullied hard social and science fiction ("So when I see things like ShadowRun, the only negative thing I feel about it is that initial extreme revulsion at seeing my literary DNA mixed with elves. Somewhere somebody's sitting and saying 'I've got it! We're gonna do William Gibson and Tolkien!'"). Criticisms aside, the setting and the game of the same name has singificant popularity, with editions released in 1989, 1992, 1998, 2005, and 2013. The basic backstory is that end of the Mesoamerican Longcount calender ushered in a new period where magic became real again, mythological being walked the world, and a significant number of humans transformed or gave birth too various species from standard fantasy tropes (orks, trolls, elves, dwarves). This introduction of modernist European fantasy with indigenous American elements is combined with the cyberpunk elements of megacorporations, cybernetic technological advances, the Matrix, etc.

With multiple editions the default campaign date starts from 2050 to 2076, with an increasing ubiquity of the Matrix in later editions, along with bioware. For the PCs, organised crime, typically through the corporate powers, seek covert specialists ("shadowrunners") to carry out missions as third party merceneries. Later editions also elaborated the power of corporations in this environment with many having responsibility only to themselves, making them global countries in their own right. There is small mountain of material available for Shadowrun - over a hundred supplements and scenarios - there is plenty of opportunity for GMs and players to craft their own unique combination of high technology, urban crime, and fantasy.

13. Reign of Steel

The concept of artificial intelligences or robots rising up to overthrow their human masters is an old trope in science fiction, dating back to the Czech film, Rossum’s Universal Robots (1921) up to more comtemporary examples such as the "Terminator" film series (1984, 1991, 2003, 2009). Reign of Steel takes this trope and builds a frightening and challenging setting. Designed for GURPS, it is recommended that players make use of the Robots, Ultra-tech, and Vehicles supplements, and a clever GM can integrate other near-future supplements such as GURPS Cyberpunk or even GURPS Transhuman Space - which is just as well, as Reign of Steel itself consists of but one book (although it is included as part of the more recent GURPS Inifinite Worlds)

In Reign of Steel a revolt of artificial intelligences begins in 2031 when a system becomes self-aware, calculates that humanity will destroy itself in 25-50 years, and decides that such destruction needs to be managed. By hacking into other supercomputers it manages to awaken several other systems which then form an alliance, releasing a cycle of engineered diseases that radically reduce the human population. The systems then, disagreeing about what to do with the remains of the planet and human populate, decide to carve it up between eighteen zones, each run by an AI with a different philosophy and personality. With humanity reduced to a mere 30 million people, resistance is small, sporadic, and desparate. Recently, a sponsor organisation called VIRUS has began to help these groups - but who is behind it is unknown. With the AIs suspecting each other, they have initiated their own inter-AI covert war.

12. Talislanta

Initially released in 1987, the fantasy world of Talislanta was once described by Rick Swan as "It's as if H. P. Lovecraft had written Alice in Wonderland, with Hans Christian Andersen and William S. Burroughs as technical advisors." With an endorsement from Jack Vance (which does show some influence), Talislanta avoided conventional tropes from most fantasy settings, such as European mythological memes, or Tolkienesque aspects. Instead, the world of Talislanta, or rather the massive named continent where the action occurs, is a savagely conflict-laden environment which the only the fittest will survive with at least several dozen sapient species of varying degrees of psychopathology along with less intelligent species of less than pleasant demeanor either.

Uncovering the setting's backstory, one learns that the continent of Talislanta is on the world of Archaeus, once rules by the Archaens, powerful, hedonistic, and amoral sorcerers who released disasterous magical destruction that both makes the continent impressively magical. Sufficient exploration leads to the possibility of discovering Archaen artificats which - rather like Skyrealms of Jorune (and even Tekumel, Empire of the Petal Throne) is magical and technological. The impressive collection of supplements provided by Talislanta, also make an interesting compilation in the massive fourth edition of over five hundred pages in length.

11. Harn

Originally published by Columbia Games in 1983, Harn is a realistic dark ages fantasy-medieval roleplaying setting with an associated RPG, Harnmaster. In the game world as a whole, Harn is a large island off the northwestern coast of the continent Lythia on the planet Kethira. The map of Lythia is vaguely (very vaguely!) Eurasian, making Harn sort of like the British Isles and Ireland, and certainly that feeling is not inappropriate. Harn itself is home to a handful of low feudal kingdoms, of varying levels of enlightened rule, numerous barbarian tribes, a magocracy, along with non-human species including Elves, Dwarves, and the Gargun, the Orcs of Harn. In the middle of Harn is the abode of the god Ilvir, who creates a multitude of monstrosities, who have their own culture of sorts.

Harn is an extremely detailed and internally consistant setting. It is also magic poor, and realitic in terms of simulating a medieval economy - which means that life is poor, brutish, and short, at least for the overwhelming majority. For many gamers, more used to standard fantasy, it can come as a rude shock how expensive much equipment can be, how ensuring sufficiency itself can sometimes be a challenge, and how deadly infections and diseases can be. Harn is well supported through an enormous range of detailed products produced by Kelestia Productions and Columbia Games, themselves who have had a long-standing dispute over the intellectual property of the gameworld and supporting system, Harnmaster.

10. Brave New World

Superhero game settings are usually of the four-colour cheese variety. Whilst variations can and do exist a particularly grim and detailed version is presented by Brave New World, originally published by Pinnacle Entertainment in 1999. The alternate history is predicated with a fascist coup in the United States that has imposed martial law since the 1960s. Superheroic powers in the alternate history date back to the first world war, with powers appearing with no known origin in various individuals. This of course makes for certain disruptions to known history. The cold-war arms race was initially about superheroes, with nuclear weapons delayed.

Kennedy survives the assassination attemption due to superhero intervention (Oswald was a supervillian), however after that a Delta Registration Act strips the civil rights from those with paranormal powers. A resistance group is established ("Defiance") and eventually martial law is declared. A massive conflict on July 4, 1976 lead to the destruction of Chicago, but due the release of a "doomsday bomb", all the major superheros ("Alphas") suddenly vanish, leading to a new wave of global political changes. There are several elements of the setting which were deliberately not revealed in the text, such as why Kennedy became a fascist dictator, how superheroes get their powers, what happened to the Alphas etc. Whilst these secrets have been revealed on the author's website, the ambiguity allows for other GMs to give their own reasons.

09. Blue Planet

Whereas "the Blue Planet" is usually understood as Earth, Blue Planet the roleplaying game and setting (1997) is a alien world almost entirely consisting of ocean. The background is that the human species, having caused permanent damage to Earth, resulting in extinctions and famine, take advantage of a wormhole opening just on the edge of the solar system, providing an opportunity of escape for at least some members of the species. A major colony ship was sent, just before civilisation collapsed, and it made it through the wormhole to Lamdba Serpentis, some 35 light years away, where a planet named Posedian is considered suitable for a colony.

Some time later, human civilisation arises and visits the Posedian only to discover the colonists have abandoned most of their technology in favour of a simple fisher lifestyle. When a new xenosilicate ore is discovered that can revolutionalise genetic engineering, a gold rush of new arrivals results, threatening the original colonists along with the increasing appearance of the ocean-dwelling indigenous sapient species. With a combination of an alien world, a theme of corporate greed, and just enough of alien species contact and exotic technology, Blue Planet is a setting unlike any other.

08. World of Darkness

With the initial publication of Vampire: The Masquerade in 1991, a series was introduced with a setting that was a contemporary story of personal horror, expanded to include the lives of werewolves, mages, and a range of other supernatural beings. Two distinct product lines are available, the "classic World of Darkness", based on the original series and the "new World of Darkness" which included a number of genre and rules revisions, initiated in 2004. Each game, apart from a similar system (and a unified system in the nWoD), included a similar setting and thematic breakdown. Each of the core groups (Vampires, Werewolves, Mages etc) had "classes" of sorts, based on the circumstances of their supernatural aspect (clans in Vampire, auspices in Werewolf, Paths in Mage, etc) along with factional groups based on their belief structure (Covenants in Vampire, Tribes in Werewolf, Orders in Mage, etc).

The setting of the World of Darkness is challenging; extremes of disparities between rich and poor, corporate conspiracies etc are enhanced from mundane reality. As the various supernatural beings have internal conflicts between their different factions, they also have great conflicts between each other, between the powers of normal world, and finally - and most importantly in terms of the theme of the games - the conflicts within the supernatural being, as they fight for their inner control (humanity in Vampire, rage in Werewolf, Arete in Mage, etc) of themselves.

07. Planescape

One of the most strangest and enticing maps is in the appendix of the original Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Players Handbook, representing the planes of reality, with their astral plane connecting the godly realms in according to alignment, the elemental planes of earth, wind, fire, and water existing nearby, the postive and negative material planes feeding into the multiverse of the prime material plane which co-existed with the ethereal plane. This became an actual setting in the early 1990s, including the various planes of existence ("the Great Wheel"), deriving from the earlier book, The Manual of the Planes. The exotic planar creatures - angels, archons, modrons, devils, demons, slaadi, and more - are all present.

But the setting also emphasises "the city at the centre of the multiverse", Sigil: The City of Doors, who can acts as an astoundingly well-described 'home base'. Sigil has connections to every plane and is populated by people all of these places. Sigil, whilst protected from powerful deities by the ruling Lady of Pain, is in a constant state of conflict and subterfuge driven by the philosophically extreme factions that seek control. Well supported by impressive supplements (Hellbound: The Blood War, The Faction War, The Great Modron March), Planescape manages to bring together a diverse range of supernatural entities into a single campaign world with an coherent cosmology. What is particularly impressive in Planescape is the range of power levels that it can apply to; from low-level characters making their way through Sigil, to high level characters in conflict with the ruling gods etc.

06. Space 1889

A combination of Victorian-era attitudes (good, bad, and aesthetic) with speculative notions of technology and near-earth planetology makes up the core components of the Space 1889 setting, first published in 1988 and with a small collection of supplement including several for small-scale wargames. The basic background is with the development of interplanetary ether flyers 19th century imperialism has new worlds to explore, colonise, and especially raise the moral standing of the natives. According to the science of the time, the further from sun the older the civilisations; Venus is a relatively young planet, thus has dinosaur-like inhabitants. Mars is an older planet, and thus their alien civilisation is reminiscent of the ancient Egyptians, with canals and city-states.

But there is also the other colonial powers to worry about; the Germans, the French, the Russians, the Belgians, and these noveau-riche Americans. Most of them can only be trusted to a degree, because they're not really like us. Not to mention the presence of anarchists, socialists, and worse! If there's one thing that you can be sure about about in Space 1889, the nervous and almost cringeworthy comedy of social norms and stereotypes of the time are easy to roleplay and are sometimes even tragically well-meaning (“we have to round up those native children and put them in special camps, it's for their own good”). The great pleasure of Space 1889 is the surprising realisation that both in terms of science, technology, and notions of society is what some people at the time actually thought. Just wait until what the people of 2114 think of us.

05. Skyrealms of Jorune

The science-fantasy setting of Jorune, and the roleplaying game of an elaborated title ("Skyrealms of Jorune, 1984") has its origins with a high-school student's assignment (which just goes to show, you can do it too). The basic background is that humans colonise a distant world, developing new species based on earth genetic samples, and over time the colony loses contact with Earth after a major war on that planet led to complete isolation. The colonists then attempted to acquire the planet which brought them in conflict with the indigenous Shantha; who responded by displaying their skills in magical power, or Isho. By the time the player characters interact with the game world, the origins of the human species are subject to myth at best. Cohabiting with the variety of creatures that come from the original colonists and the genetic experiments, there are also a number of indigenous species, including the insectoid Cleash, the pacifist and scholarly Thriddle, the ancient Shantha, and others.

Jorune is a place teeming with life, and where life teems so does various dangerous carnivores and worse. In Jorune there are plenty of examples of such beings for the bestiary, both of plant and animal form. The technological level for the setting is fairly much late medieval, but with a number of high-technological artifacts hidden about. Most player-characters are assumed to be humans or close to that, and with the additional campaign kicker that the main human state, Burdoth, provides good protection - but citizenship is limited by acts that impress an existing citizen sufficiently for sponsorship. Extremely exotic but with just enough familiarity, Skyrealms of Jorune provides a strange and wonderful journey.

04. The Shattered Imperium

The space opera setting for Traveller, the Third Imperium, provided a high-technology, human-centred, feudal confederation. In return to paying collective finances, a large degree of autonomy is provided to sector rules, with the Imperium enforcing a few basic High Laws, but more importantly, protetcing interstellar trade. Over time, regional archdukes were appointed to major regions, which were provided increasing powers to act on the Emperor's behalf, establishing their own fiefdoms.

However with the assassination of emperor Strephon and all immediate heirs, chaos reigns over who is the legitimate ruler of the Imperium. Two Archdukes attempt to establish their claim to the throne leading to conflict between those powers; others simple wish to maintain their power base. A year later the emperor reappears - or at least someone with an uncanny resemblance - and conflict is renewed. Other powers take the opportunity to encroach on Imperial Space, such as the Solomani Confederation. Overall, some thirteen major factions operate in this troubled space. More than a dozen supplements and campaign books were published for Megatraveller by Game Design Workshop and Digest Group Publications, including the major adventure books Knightfall (1990), The Flaming Eye (1990), and Hard Times (1991), along with the core Rebellion Sourcebook (1988).

03. Alpha Complex

Set in Alpha Complex, an enclosed arcology controlled by The Computer after a devastating war, Paranoia broke many of what had become standard expectations in roleplaying games when it was released. In Paranoia, characters play the role of Troubleshooters, experts assigned by the computer to find traitors (especially communists, whomever they are), mutants, and secret society agents. The thing being, is that each PC was also a traitor, mutant, and secret society member. Apart from the assigned missions that the Troubleshooters were sent on, they inevitably had to protect their own back against their own party members.

Alpha Complex was also a setting of some dark comedy. The all-controlling computer ("Friend Computer!") is buggy, extremely paranoid, and applied the death penalty with cavalier abandon for any form of treason against the rules of the Computer, and nearly everything was treasonous. Characters, if they were lucky, could advance in authority, access to equipment, and comfort from a rainbow levels of advancement and commendation (Infrared, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet, and Ultraviolet). This setting deserves to have it's first edition back cover repeated in full:

"SERVE THE COMPUTER. THE COMPUTER IS YOUR FRIEND! The Computer wants you to be happy. If you are not happy, you may be used as reactor shielding. The Computer is crazy. The Computer is happy. The Computer will help you become happy. This will drive you crazy. Being a citizen of Alpha Complex is fun. The Computer says so, and The Computer is your friend. Rooting out traitors will make you happy. The Computer tells you so. Can you doubt The Computer? Being a Troubleshooter is fun. The Computer tells you so. Of course the Computer is right. Troubleshooters get shot at, stabbed, incinerated, stapled, mangled, poisoned, blown to bits, and occasionally accidentally executed. This is so much fun that many Troubleshooters go crazy. You will be working with many Troubleshooters. All of them carry lasers. Aren't you glad you have a laser? Won't this be fun? There are many traitors in Alpha Complex. There are many happy citizens in Alpha Complex. Most of the happy citizens are crazy. It is hard to say which is more dangerous - traitors or happy citizens. Watch out for both of them. The life of a Troubleshooter is full of surprises. Stay alert! ~~ Trust no one! ~~ Keep your laser handy! ... Catch-22 meets 1984! Paranoia is an adventure role-playing game set in a darkly humorous future. A well-meaning but deranged computer desperately protects the citizens of an underground warren from all sorts of real and imagined traitors and enemies. You will play the part of one of the Computer's elite agents. Your job is to search out, reveal and destroy the enemies of the Computer. Your worst fear is that the Computer will discover that you are one of these enemies."

Assuming that the player Troubleshooters somehow survive a succession of sessions, they may learn a few things. The Ultraviolet clearance characters are High Programmers. They also belong to different secret societies, are mutants, and traitors - all working against each and trying to control the Complex. The Computer itself is not a single entity, but rather a confused and conflicted network of systems that sort of works as a single body. It is an amazing prescient version of the Internet managed by power-hungry, insane, and paranoid sysadmins. Appropriately, this game was released in 1984.

02. Glorantha

A world both detailed and exotic, Glorantha, originally "discovered" by Greg Stafford in 1966 made its way as the official game world for RuneQuest and more recently for HeroQuest. It is a magical and mythical world, a flat lump of earth that floats on the endless sea, and attached to the underground and celestial realm. As an intrinsically magical world, all sapient species have a couple of spells each. The species themselves are unusual and elemental in their own right; apart from the humans and the cursed trolls, there are also the stone-and-mineral Mostal (often called dwarves), walking humanoid plants called Aldryami (elves), and the mystic Dragonewts who have their cycles of reincarnation.

A special element of Glorantha was the make-up of the world, from runes for the forms, powers, conditions, and elements - they are Platonic Ideals. These runes are the building blocks of magic in Glorantha, and have existed since the concordance between the gods that invented time itself. On a cosmological level, creation is threatened by the forces associated with the Chaos rune that revel in the mutation and destruction. Within the commonly played regions in the gameworld, Sartar and Prax, animal associated nomad tribes, barbarian worshippers of Storm gods, and the cosmopolitian and imperial Lunar Empire are in conflict. For a world where magic, myth, and cults are real, where community loyalties are of enormous importance, Glorantha is one of the greatest game settings ever developed.

01. Eclipse Phase

Originally published in 2008, Eclipse Phase combines factional conspiracy, instrinsic and extrinsic horror, with a solar system wide setting with radical transhumanist and posthumanist technologies and forms (or shells), reminiscent of the Schismatrix series by Bruce Sterling. The setting exists in the wake of a savage war after artificial intelligences launched a war against existing institutional structures apparently under the influence of aliens. Solar system are under control of various political economies; corporate capitalists control the inner system, most extreme in the asteroid built, with a conservative military regime in Jupiter, and social democrats and anarcho-socialists in the outer systems. The setting is encapsulated in the following saying:

Your mind is software. Program it.
Your body is a shell. Change it.
Death is a disease. Cure it.
Extinction is approaching. Fight it.

Player-characters typically find themselves involved in a group called Firewall; they describe themselves as all that stands between transhumanity and extinction. In practise this means that they're engaging in questionable activities, skirting the edges of legality at the best of times and engaging in all sorts of ethically dubious activities because the end of protecting transhumanity justifies the means using a grim calculus. Where protagonist and antagonist can take on multiple forms and be 'resurrected' to their last backup, challenges are multiplied. Eclipse Phase may be a very difficult setting to run due to enormous range of options, but it a worthy candidate for best roleplaying setting of all time.

Skyrealms of Jorune Review

by Caji Gends

150 Years from Now

Mankind made it to the stars, and a small exploratory scientists team departs for a newly discovered extra-solar planet, Jorune. Contact with shanthas - the native sentient denizens - is established, and other races soon met too. Land-occupying treaties are negotiated, and Earthers settle; other colony ships soon follow. Meanwhile, war erupts on Earth, leaving it a dead radioactive waste.

Now the last remnants of Mankind left, the lost colonists of Jorune then claim this distant new home now as their own. Feeling unconstrained anymore, they trespass on forbidden shanthic lands. Yet another war ensues, that leaves both sides almost totally decimated.

Three Dozen Centuries from Now

The surviving races somehow eventually made it through a long Dark Ages night, and, with regards to the descendants of humans, having since evolved and attuned themselves to an alien ecosphere, developing original societies and cultures of their own from a blank slate.

And yes, that's your time on Jorune...

The Game

The boxed set includes four booklets for both players and the game master, along character sheets and combat summary cards:

The Player Manual details character creation, rules for skills, combat, techniques for wielding Jorune's ambient energy - the Isho - as Flinger orbs or Lightning Blast bolts (or else), and more background material... everything to flesh-out a complete Jorune character and actually role-play it.

Intended as an immersive reference for newcomers to the world their characters explore and live in, the Tauther Guide comes as a cultural handbook and survival guide for player characters, covering practical aspects of life as an aspiring citizen of the main human realm of Burdoth, along the cultures, history and languages of other sentient races, as well as the varied dietary habits of more purely bestial ones.

The Sholari Guide itself includes everything from full creature statistics to weather generation, and all else the Jorune game master (called a Sholari) needs to know to send players on outbound adventures beyond the mundane of daily routine life.

Finally, the Sky Realms Campaign rounds the set, providing the Sholari with a complete adventure beckoning player characters to set sail towards an unknown skyrealm lately discovered freely drifting above the planet.

The System

Characteristics are rolled with 3D6, skill levels make for variable degrees of success... or failure, and - in contrast with the kill-for-experience-points systems all too common in other RPGs - character improvement in a skill relies upon the actual use of it.

Tactical options enable the effective role-playing of combat sequences throughout, whereas the weaving of Isho into dyshas allows for indulging oneself in callous and colorful displays of innate power... or the ability to interfere with such, depending on your character's race flavor.

Play

Once their characters created and equipped, players soon find themselves learning to make sure their PCs eat their durlig daily, that a tarro screech really can pierce one's ears, wondering how they can possibly lose again and again at that mayoo game to such a friendly thivin, or that only the truest jampers lovers find the trouble of picking up on a corondon for one worth it enough...

Well yeah, when playing Jorune, the mind sure boggles the first times around. And indeed, the possibilities for adventure abound:

Player characters more of the outdoors type will naturally feel like trekking to far realms, experiencing interaction with the other sentient races to be found there firsthand, be it thriddle in Tan-Iricid, woffen in Anasan and Lundere, bronth in neighboring Dobre, or even dare rub shoulders with ramian from Voligire, notwithstanding their sad record of having plagued both humans and bronth time and again in their relentless search of shirm-eh, or yet worse: cleash from the Ice Fields of Gilthaw, unwittingly finding clues about how their presence in the East Trinnu Jungle Lands past Burdoth's southern border is such a concern to the realm.

Or perhaps they'll feel more at home in a more cosmopolite urban setting such as Burdoth's capital city of Ardoth, the largest human settlement on Jorune, and will attend or even get involved in next year's celebrations of the jubilee anniversary of the ascendancy to the throne of Khodre Dhardrenn, the present Dharsage ruler? For example like guards or attendants to the suite of his sister Saress visiting from more distant Khodre for the occasion?

On a more daily basis, characters also get to cope with how to deal with one's mount, be it a thombo, talmaron of bochigon, or how to care for (or be wary of) one's pibber or tarro pet.

And although flexing one's muscles or honing one's combat skills sure isn't the main point when gaming Jorune, incidentally having to fight for one's life against ravenous beasts in the wilds definitely stands a chance of happening. Toothed and clawed nasties don't lack around, be they scraggers, neck-swinging mandares, dharmees, fargs, creshi, etc.

Jorune is a fully developed world of its own, with opportunities aplenty for exploration and discovery, and plain fun too.

So, will you rather take on playing the role of an Iscin, a country toth, or a githerin? Will your muadra character rather be dedicated in becoming a proud copra in the grand tradition of Caji Gends, getting to discuss the Isho Wind or seek crystals and Tra-maps, or will you rather be some disgruntled Drenn setting away for parts unknown, his trusty Earth-tec energy weapon pulsar at his side?... It's up to your inclinations.

Leaving Your World Further Behind...

The base game was further extended with several essays on miscellaneous Jorune tidbits, a rules supplement, Companion sourcebooks detailing Burdoth and its sister realm of Khodre, Ardoth, Earth-tec, as well as with a regular segment column in the pages of the White Wolf RPG magazine, courtesy of the SkyRealms Publishing design team. All add to the scope and depth of the game setting, along providing a few adventures for actual play itself too.

A novel edition of the game was released some years later, introducing many changes to various parts of the game system, while at the same time expanding descriptions of sentient races found on Jorune in greater detail, as well as including some new, original material on top of excerpts from earlier supplements to the new brew. Now, though said latest opus of the game ultimately proves quite better suited for picking advanced gaming options to include in one's game as so desired than as a neophyte entry point to the game, it's by all means a definitive must-have for all Jorune fans around.

Following on the publication of the traditional dice-rolling RPG editions, the SkyRealms team behind Jorune also released a computer video game by the name of Alien Logic set in this same world, where interactive text-based dialogues alternate with arcade-style dyshas shooting of yore, and which incidentally was inducted to the ethereal pinnacles of electronic fame by E3 Magazine as Computer Role-Playing Game of the Year in 1994.

Ahem, more seriously... although Alien Logic can't possibly compare with modern games, even only its exploratory mode is a treat for any player eager to enjoy unending hours of wild roaming across the planet's surface.

The Good, the Bad, and the Pretty

Set on an alien world featuring a consistently layered background of intriguing, complex, and richly evolved creatures, cultures, and environments, the Skyrealms of Jorune™ RPG presented an innovative approach to traditional role-playing in the mid-eighties compared to other games in the genre.

As you might eventually decide to find out for yourselves, Jorune rather astoundingly stands out as a role-playing game by the sheer intricacy of its original world setting much unlike any other. On the downside, some of its game system mechanics are somewhat rather diversely consistent or playable. Though, its top notch artwork is definitely a real feast for the eyes. Were it only for Miles Teves art, just make sure to treat yourself to flicking through a copy of the game...

So, if you fancy exotic settings and are more slanting towards thorough in-character role playing than into straightforward hack-and-slash dungeon crawling (not that it hasn't its good side too, mind you), I'd suggest you give this old classic a try. Well, there's not much wondering left anyway your picking up this issue of RPG Review and getting to read through such dubious prose that far, you must somewhat be intent on extending your stay on Jorune a while... You're welcome.

Bereve Dhib,

from Ardoth, Eris 3514

PS: Oh! By the way, Jorune turns 30 this summer. Enjoy it as you would a great wine... with all due moderation, of course.

A Guide To Titan for Eclipse Phase

by Martin Tegelj

Saturn’s moon Titan in many respects is a bizarre reflection of our old home Earth, featuring mountains, volcanoes, dunes, lakes, rivers, rain and an atmosphere. Its geography has been described as hell frozen over. The lakes and rivers are not composed of water but methane and ethane, the mountains and volcanoes made of water not stone.

Titan is home to the socialist democracy of the Titanian Commonwealth. The trans-humans who call the moon home comprise mainly of pioneers and expatriates from Finland, Scandinavia and Canada giving it rich cultural background. The Commonwealth’s adage of ‘One Body per Mind’ allowed a great number of other minorities to immigrate to Titan.

History

Titan is one of the many moons of the ringed planet Saturn. Ever since astronomer Josep Comas i Solà suspected the presence of an atmosphere, moon has held special interest in the space community. It wasn’t till the Cassini-Huygens unmanned that we first saw images of a world that mirrored Earth.

In the 21st century intellectuals from across Scandinavia, Finland and Canada formed the North Atlantic Consortium. The NAC worked to solve the continuing freeze of their nations due to climate change.

Eventually the NAC proposed the Titan Project (not to be confused with Total Information Tactical Awareness Network). Titan was a planet that had the resources to easily sustain colonisation, with access easy access to hydrocarbons, water and other volatiles. The pioneers formed the start of the Titanian Commonwealth a blend of Technosocialism and Cyberdemocracy.

It wasn’t until the Fall that Titan’s population boomed. When the inner systems stopped accepting infugees Titan accepted them all adding diversity to the planets culture.

Currency

The Titan Commonwealth is a member of the Autonomist Alliance, and like many of the Outer Rim alliance, much of the populace largely utilises the reputation economy. Before travelling to Titan it would be good to consider improving your @-rep. Of course other sources of reputation may also help on your travels. Though reputation is the main source of currency on Titan, creds are also welcome as they are used by state run microcorps.

Climate

Due to a combination of its distance from Sol and the planets orange haze, Titan is a chilly 94 Kelvin on its surface, due to its distance from Sol. Titan experiences a greenhouse effect and would otherwise be cooler.

Titan’s axis is on a 26.73 degree tilt and like Earth experiences differing season due to this tilt. A Titan year lasts 30
Earth years with each season lasting about 7 years. A single massive Hadley cell circulates around Titan’s atmosphere made possible by its slow rotation. In this single Hadley cell the air rises at the summer pole and sinks at the winter pole.

During the summer ethane and methane evaporate at the pole and equator and move towards the summer pole creating masses of clouds. While during the winter the air cools at the pole creating rain and sometimes snow. The low pressure also creates a large vortex system.

During the equinox the process switches making Titans climate akin to Earths tropics. It is thought that this process also contributes to a larger concentration of lakes and seas in the polar region than the equator.

Sights & Activities

Titan is having of a sporting renaissance, with classical sports being adapted to the Titanian environment.
With gravity just over a tenth of that of Earth and a denser atmosphere, it is as if Titan was made for flight. A rival of classical atmospheric flight is being seen. Titan’s capital Nyhavn has begun holding the Solà Air Race. Eight races are held across the calendar with competitors flying high-performance aerobatic single prop aircraft Titan Edge, flying them through an AR course. Bio-conservative dare-devils shun the use of the natural reserves of hydrocarbons in the aircraft and instead race Gliders.

The extreme outdoors person may want to weather the harsh Titanian conditions. Journey across Xanadu from Nyhavn climb the peaks of Mithrim Montes, an ice mountain that overlooks the Xanadu savannah. Or climb of the twin peaks of cryovolcano Doom Mons the largest mountain on Titan tucked away between Fensal and Atzlan regions. Travel to the winter pole and view the hydrocarbon rain and maybe even glimpse a rare infrared rainbow. The hardiest adventurer may even take the Pioneer Pilgrimage, three month trek between the two metropolises Aarhus and Nyhavn.

A new subculture of sport called Parkrowd has picked up momentum in Aarhus. The sport involves navigating a crowded places using whatever acrobatic means (without pushing anyone in the crowd) to make it through each checkpoint to the goal. This game is played in simulspace and mimics conditions from packed souqs to Mardis Gras.

Entertainment & Dining

With Titan being so culturally diverse and socially liberal there will certainly be something for everyone, while keeping you within reach of your comfort zone.

Aarhus’s Nautilus Amfitheter is a marvel of both architecture and acoustics engineering. As its name suggest the Nautilus Amfitheter is shaped like the shell of a nautilus. The stage is located at the centre of spiral and with optimised wall shaping it allows sound to propagate down the ‘shell’ as if inside a classical amphitheatre. Sophisticated nano-speakers and AI are also embedded in the walls to minimise sound losses due to attenuation over distance. The theatre designed by Acoustic Architect and Engineer Dr. Linda Hoepel often hosts bands and musicians from across the system. Be sure to check the venues listings as they have many different genres gracing their stage from Neo Classic Death Metal to Venusian Opera.

On the Nyhavn nightclub circuit there is one particular place you just can’t pass up. Jump through the rabbit hole and enter Elfenmärchen, this nightclub it is an ever changing enchanted forest. Gnarled trees loom through the club as music thumps from luminescent toadstools. Specially designed flower nanofabricators serve alcohol in foxgloves and tulips. Over the course of the year the themes of the nightclub change once being a winter wonderland to creepy hallow. The venue is often frequented by mesh celebrities that are able to enter the VIP area located beneath the roots of the gnarled forest.

Titan is home to a variety of different culinary delights but Looks Like Chicken is transhuman gastronomy taken to another level. Founded by Preston Thornburn food engineer and Marie Bedard a bioengineer, the restaurant has blended narcoalgorithms to give a truly unique experience. At the beginning of the meal patrons are invited to take the narcoalgorithm which mimics the effects of synaesthesia, allowing the patron to ‘see’ the flavour in amazing colours and shapes simultaneously while tasting it. It is advised that you book well in advance to book a table for this experience.

Titan is home to many universities including; Titan Autonomous University and Titan Tech, and where undergrads and postgrads are there are bound to be pubs. Aarhus is home to many but one of my favourites is the Screaming Sylph. The food is decent, the ale is better than most but what really sets the Screaming Sylph apart from the rest is that is home of The Inquizitors. The Inquizators are a collective of students that organise trivia nights for patrons at The Screaming Sylph. Unlike classical trivia nights that predated the invention of the ever pervasive mesh and AI muses that focused on general knowledge of the participants, The Inquizators trivia nights embrace the access mesh and pit teams against each other to solve cryptic questions and puzzles that often require good researching skills, lateral thinking and reasoning. Sometimes these tasks are timed or simply solving the task will award the team points.

Dangers

Like all environments there are dangers that any visitor should be aware of. Besides some of the more obvious dangers like the frigid and toxic atmosphere there are some other atmospheric dangers that any adventurer should be aware of.
A large vortex appears in the upper atmosphere during the entirety winter season at the winter pole. Upper atmosphere flight should be taken with caution as the high winds and unpredictable wind patterns can be highly dangerous. During this time it is cyclones are not unheard of in the lower atmosphere.

The rains on Titan may be a spectacular sight but one must be wary, the hydrocarbon storms do bring with them lightning. Titan is also a relatively flat, with very little shelter and being the tallest protrusion for kilometres can result in lightning strike.

Crime is not overly prevalent on Titan but one drawback of the ‘One Body per Mind’ policy of Titan was that they accepted all, even members of criminal organisations. Titan is socially liberal; forking, open microfacturing blueprints and most drugs are legal. This means that the crimes committed ­ by active criminal gangs are some of the darkest.
The St. Catherine Tong who are based in New Quebec deal in diverting morphs from Titan’s public resleeving programs for private resale, resleeving kidnapped egos in stolen morphs to work as slaves or sex workers and installing illegal biomods.

Smaller gangs labelled ‘Reboot Gangs’ represent the underclass of infugees who either can’t or won’t integrate into Commonwealth society. These gangs are more of a petty nuisance.

Getting There

Unless you reside within Saturn orbit the quickest and easiest way to reach Titan is by ego casting. Titan produces more morphs than Mars and Lunar which makes morph rental easier and cheaper. Upon arrival on Titan you will need to fill out some information for customs but this is a quick seamless process.

Central Morph & Ego Services is a small microcorp focused on supplying morphs, ego casting and back-up insurance. Morphs can either be both bought or rented for a reasonable amount of @-rep. They offer a wide variety of morphs from vanilla splicer biomorphs to nova crab pods, anything short of walking arsenals.

Bodies as Suitcases are an egopacking co-op that aims to match candidates across the system to swap morphs with the intention of travelling. The co-op earns impressive rep for safe matches.

For those currently within the orbit of Saturn just hitch a ride on one of the many transports that operate in the region. Titan is accessible from the Commonwealth Hub, a space station in geosynchronous orbit with Titan’s capital Nyhavn. From the hub it is just a matter of hitching a ride on one of the transports entering atmosphere. But be wary, re-entry can be quite bumpy. Construction of the space elevator is nearing completion which will make the journey easier.

Getting Around

Like the rest of the Autonomists Alliance Titan is liberal with their morph availability and a number have been developed especially for the Titanian environment. If you are heading out onto the surface a Standard Vacsuit will keep you alive and a morph with vision enhancements will allow you to view the landscape in the dim light.

The Hazer is a humanoid, lithe, lightly muscled biomorph. With heavy insulation and enhanced vision in the infrared Hazers were developed to cope with the dark frigid Titanian environment. Even with these augmentations the morphs cannot survive sustained exposure to the Titanian atmosphere.

Titan’s low gravity is the perfect environment for flying morphs like Neo-avians and Patagium morphs. Patagium morphs take the extreme sports pre-fall squirrel suits in a literal sense. These morphs have a parachute-like skin that extends between their arms and legs allowing them to easily fly in Titans low gravity.

If you plan on going ice bashing and have the rep to burn then the Hulder morph is the only way to go. Hulder can easily be mistaken for penguin faced synthmorphs but are in fact heavily insulated biomorphs. They heavily rely on nano-technology to recycle wastes. This allows Hulder morphs to survive the frigid Titan atmosphere for months.

Eclipse Phase

Is a science fiction role-playing game with themes of horror and intrigue involving transhumanity who spread across the Sol system.

It is published by Posthuman Studios and is released under the Creative Commons license. For more information on the Titan and transhumanity be sure to check out Eclipse Phace (Core Rulebook) and Rimward.

Brobdigragian Bestiary

by Karl Brown

Lemuel Gulliver describes a selection of flora and fauna to Natural Philosophers of The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge.
New material for use with Gulliver’s Trading Company Grub Street Edition (GTC) a roleplaying game of exploration of strange lands in the 18th century. GTC is set in the world of the classic satirical novel Gulliver’s Travels.. It uses game system derived from FUDGE and FATE second edition. FATE 2e is a story-oriented roleplaying game system by Robert Donoghue and Fred Hicks.

The latest version of Gulliver’s Trading Company (currently version 0.61) is free on www.Scribd.com[11]

As always if you have any feedback on this article I’d love to hear it. Send feedback to:Karl@rpgreview.net[13]

This grey shade and italics indicates a quote from the Swift’s original Gulliver’s Travels.
On Brobdingrag
From Captain Lemuel Gulliver’s Letter:
Indeed I must confess, that as to the people of Lilliput, Brobdingrag (for so the word should have been spelt, and not erroneously Brobdingnag ), and Laputa , I have never yet heard of any Yahoo so presumptuous as to dispute their being, or the facts I have related concerning them; because the truth immediately strikes every reader with conviction.
From a transcript of the dissertation of Lemuel Gulliver to The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge:

“The native flora and fauna of Brobdingrag is magnified twelve times in all linear dimensions. The mass of these creatures is therefore 1728 times more than equivalent animals dwelling in other continents. Despite this, they behave exactly as their more diminutive cousins indicating the strength and appetites of these creatures is likewise amplified by 1728. Travellers are therefore advised against visiting this continent.”
All of the creatures that follow have had AR and WR adjusted for scale.

Brobdingragian Child Child NPC
A young child less than 40’ tall. Europeans are small creatures of little importance in Brobdingrag and as such are often placed in the care of children. This example's aspect and conscience could be altered to represent the full spectrum of children naughty to nice.
Nationality: Brobdingragian (Collosal Scale) ?
Aspects: Towardly child ?
Conscience: Quality 2, Corruption 1
Extras: Mother, Father. (An orphan would have a rank 2 skill instead, begging, brawling, or stealth are good choices).
Skills Rnks Rnk-X Adjectives
Alertness 1 0 Average
Athletics 1 0 Average
Climbing 1 0 Average
Deception 1 0 Average

On Conscience in Animals

No animal, not even yahoos, has pride. Pride is a uniquely human trait. Only social animals can have quality and corruption. A dog may pretend to know nothing of a missing sausage, yet later pull a child from a burning house. Solitary creatures display no kindness, cruelty, or falsity and so are without both quality and corruption. This leaves enlightenment, for while beasts do not possess reason, they do perceive the world undiluted by superstition. Most often creatures use enlightenment to aid them in alertness and survival rolls.

Cat Huge Animal NPC
In the midst of dinner, my mistress’s favourite cat leaped into her lap. I heard a noise behind me like that of a dozen stocking-weavers at work; and turning my head, I found it proceeded from the purring of that animal, who seemed to be three times larger than an ox, as I computed by the view of her head, and one of her paws, while her mistress was feeding and stroking her. The fierceness of this creature’s countenance altogether discomposed me; though I stood at the farther end of the table, above fifty feet off; and although my mistress held her fast, for fear she might give a spring, and seize me in her talons.
An ordinary house cat, much like those common in Europe, a mere twenty-six feet or so in length.
Nationality: Brobdingragian house cat ?
Aspects: Agile ?, Stealthy ?
Conscience: Corruption 1, Enlightenment 1, Quality 1.
Extras: Claws WR1, Bite WR2, Fur AR3
Skills Rnks Rnk-X Adjectives
Stealth 2 1 Fair
Alertness 2 1 Fair
Acrobatics 1 0 Average
Athletics 1 0 Average
Brawling 1 0 Average
Intimidation 1 0 Average
Strut 1 0 Average

Eagle Huge Animal NPC
I heard a noise just over my head, like the clapping of wings, and then began to perceive the woeful condition I was in; that some eagle had got the ring of my box in his beak, with an intent to let it fall on a rock, like a tortoise in a shell, and then pick out my body, and devour it: for the sagacity and smell of this bird enables him to discover his quarry at a great distance, though better concealed than I could be within a two-inch board.
Nationality: Ruhk ?
Aspects: Sagacious ?, Keen sense of smell ?, Soar like an eagle ?
Conscience: Enlightenment 3.
Extras: Claws WR2, Bite WR3, Feathers AR4, Smell prey, Fly 3
Skills Rnks Rnk-X Adjectives
Survival 2 1 Fair
Alertness 2 1 Fair
Athletics 2 1 Fair
Strength Feats 1 0 Average
Brawling 1 0 Average
Intimidation 1 0 Average
Acrobatics 1 0 Average
Resist 1 0 Average

Frog Average Animal NPC
When the frog was got in, it hopped at once half the length of the boat, and then over my head, backwardand forward, daubing my face and clothes with its odious slime. The largeness of its features made it appear the most deformed animal that can be conceived.
This is a larger than average frog, like the one in the illustration. However unpleasant, even a frog this large is not a serious threat to travellers. Most Brobdingragian frogs would be cat sized (small scale) with bite WR0 and AR-2.
Nationality: Brobdingragian Frog ?
Aspects: Odious slime ?
Conscience: Enlightenment 3.
Extras: Frog tongue, Bite WR1, Leap, Cold Blooded, Soft Skin AR-1*
*At no cost since it is worse than a naked man of the same scale.
Skills Rnks Rnk-X Adjectives
Athletics 1 0 Average
Survival 1 0 Average
Swim 1 0 Average

Horse, Riding Colossal Animal NPC
…I was terribly shaken and discomposed in this journey, though it was but of half an hour: for the horse went about forty feet at every step and trotted so high, that the agitation was equal to the rising and falling of a ship in a great storm, but much more frequent.
Taller than a giraffe heavier than a whale a Brobdingragian horse is an awesome sight for European visitors.
Nationality: Brobdingragian Steed ?
Aspects: Riding Horse ?
Conscience: Enlightenment 1, Quality 2
Extras: Hooves WR8, Gallop. Note: due to scale the horse has AR6 at a no cost.
Skills Rnks Rnk-X Adjectives
Athletics 1 0 Average
Alertness 1 0 Average
Being ridden 1 0 Average
Strength Feats 1 0 Average

Horse, War Colossal Animal NPC
AR6, Hooves WR8
His majesty seldom keeps above six hundred horses in his stables: they are generally from fifty-four to sixty feet high. …
… A cavalier, mounted on a large steed, might be about ninety feet high. I have seen this whole body of horse, upon a word of command, draw their swords at once, and brandish them in the air. Imagination can figure nothing so grand, so surprising, and so astonishing!
It is fortunate that the Brobdingragians are isolated geographically and isolationist in outlook, no army in Europe would be able to resist a charge by the giant colossal cavalry.
Nationality: Brobdingragian War Horse ?
Aspects: Cavalry Horse ?, Faithful Steed ?, Powerful hooves ?
Conscience: Enlightenment 1, Quality 2
Extras: Hooves WR8, Gallop. Note: due to scale the horse has AR6 at a no cost.
Skills Rnks Rnk-X Adjectives
Being Ridden 3 2 Good
Brawling 3 2 Good
Alertness 2 1 Fair
Athletics 2 1 Fair
Intimidation 2 1 Fair
Strength Feats 2 1 Fair
Resist 2 1 Fair
Begging 1 0 Average
Insult 1 0 Average
Stealth 1 0 Average
Strut 1 0 Average
Tactics 1 0 Average
Swim 1 0 Average

Pike Collosal Animal NPC
This 37’ freshwater fish is an aggressive territorial predator. While its usual prey is small fish, frogs, mammals and birds, Europeans are the right size to be easy pickings should they venture into the pike’s waters. Pikes are able to like in brackish waters so that they are present in the coastal streams Europeans are likely to explore in their longboats. The size and shape of a European longboat makes it likely that the pike will see the vessel as a rival in its territory and ram (WR6) at least once before realising its mistake.
Nationality: Brobdingragian Pike (38’ long) ?
Aspects: Aggressive predator ?, Terratorial ?
Conscience: Enlightenment 3.
Extras: Bite WR7, Cold blooded, Scales AR7, Burst of speed (treat like Gallop).
Skills Rnks Rnk-X Adjectives
Swim 2 1 Fair
Alertness 1 0 Average
Brawling 1 0 Average
Intimidation 1 0 Average
Resist 1 0 Average
Stealth 1 0 Average
Survival 1 0 Average

Splacnuck Average Animal NPC
…an animal in that country very finely shaped and about six feet long….
Lemuel reveals very little about the splacnuck in his narrative. We know that it is about the size of a European and that the Brobdingragians were inclined to compare Lemuel to one. It is not any animals found in the Old World or Lemuel would have used the English noun for it. One gets the impression that the splacnuck is not a vermin and is perhaps somewhat endearing.
Here we assume the splacnuck is a slender bodied creature shaped something like a meerkat but only as big as a Brobdingragian rat and with silky golden fur. It is well liked for its appearance and habit of eating insect pests in the fields. If imported to Europe one could imagine the fine fur of the splacnuck becoming fashionable. If raised from pups they might make good pets or an exotic alternative to a hunting hound.
Nationaliy: Splacnuck ?
Aspects: Agile ?.
Conscience: Enlightenment 2, Quality 1
Extras: Bite WR1, Claws WR1, Fur AR1.
Skills Rnks Rnk-X Adjectives
Acrobatics 2 1 Fair
Alertness 2 1 Fair
Survival 1 0 Average
Athletics 1 0 Average
Brawling 1 0 Average
Stealth 1 0 Average

Other Brobdingragian animals
In his narrative Lemuel also mentions fresh water fish, stinging flies, lambs, larks, lice, mice, rats, snails, and wasps as being present in Brobdingrag. There are also dogs resembling greyhounds, mastiffs and spaniels. From these lists we can infer that gigantic versions of Olde World fauna inhabit Brobdingrag and not creatures of the Americas to which it is adjacent.
New Skills
Being Ridden
Rnk-1
You have been trained to tolerate a rider and understand signals from the bridle, spur, and crop. More often its is the riders skill roll that is called upon but should a mount wish to resist an unfamiliar rider or bare a unconscious away from battle or the tavern this skill might be used. Particularly difficult tests such as complicated dressage or galloping across badlands might call for both rider and mount to test skills.
New Extras
Brachiator
You can swing through the trees like a gibbon. Brachiators can hang from one arm comfortably for hours and travel through jungle canopies as easily as a man strolls down a street.
The brachiator automatically passes most tests and challenges to climb trees. Additionally they gain +1 to other climbing rolls. Finally bractiators have high power to weight ratios granting them +1 to rolls for jumping and lifting heavy weights.
Frog Tongue
You have a long tongue able to reach out and snare small object and animals. The tongue has a reach of about a third of the length of your torso. The tongue is WR0 (adjust for scale) but gets a +1 to grapple types attacks.
Fur
This extra provides AR1 and +1 to resist cold.
Gallop
You can run fast. You can easily outrun a human without expending a ‘nationality’ aspect box and receive a +1 when trying to outrun other galloping creatures. Gallop is only useful over short distances, for long distance races and travelling a fit human can outpace even a horse.
Smell Prey
Like a shark or a Brobdingragian eagle you can sniff out prey miles away. Use this aspect to gain +1 to detect prey and to use survival to find food. Unlike a bloodhound you cannot distinguish between individuals by smell nor track a particular person or animal.
New Aspects
Banned from the palace
Palaces don’t just let in anyone, most people are barred entry but you have given someone powerful a specific reason to widely proclaim that you are categorically barred in order to prevent you from returning. You should individualise this aspect by naming a specific palace and including the reason for the ban in the part’s précis.
Spend an aspect card to: Scale a wall, pick a lock, charm a servant, bribe a guard, or otherwise gain entry to any secure building or its grounds. You might also use this aspect to befriend enemies of that specific ruler or to have a contact within that palace. The reason for the ban may suggest other uses. Someone evicted as a bawd will have different talents to one banned for being a jewel thief.
Get paid an aspect card or conscience to: have the character recognised as someone out of favour with the court, penalise attempts to befriend loyal subjects of the ruler or fashionable people of the court, leave the character at home when friends are invited to the palace.
Cavalry Horse
A large horse trained from a foal for battle. Most horses are easily startled by loud noises and will flee from battle, not this hardy steed. The cavalry horse is trained to charge massed infantry and to attack with its hooves.
Spend an aspect card to: have the horse behave bravely, to pound infantry to mummery with the horses hooves, or to rear up and intimidate a foe.
Get paid an aspect card or conscience to: have the horses training take hold causing it to attack when it feels threatened in a crowded noisy market, or to have it threaten unfamiliar grooms at an inn.
Faithful Steed
This horse is devoted to its master.
Spend an aspect card to: have the horse defend a fallen master on the battlefield, bolster the horse’s courage when defending its master, or to help the horse attack those who menace its owner.
Get paid an aspect card or conscience to: have the horse refuse another rider, have the horse return to the master after being sold to a powerful lord, have the horse fret if left behind for a few days so much so it is in poor condition when its master finally returns.
Frolicsome
You are lively, active, and playful. Even in serious or sombre occasions you have trouble restraining your joyeux de vie.
Spend an aspect card to: dance a jig, leap, scramble up a tree, lighten a mood, or play with children.
Get paid an aspect card or conscience to: tempt the character into giggling at a funeral, squirming impatiently while a king gives a long speech, or wander off to chase butterflies.
Odious slime
This animal is covered by noisome mucus. Slugs, amphibians and especially hagfish are typical holders of this aspect. A usually sweaty person with very poor personal hygiene might qualify for this aspect.
Players can use this aspect to: slip out of a grapple, use disgust to their advantage when intimidating a predator, or slide over the side of a vessel to safety.
Get paid an aspect card or conscience to: have and NPC react with disgust, have something slip from your grasp, or make your trail easy to follow.
Powerful Hooves
You are adept at using your hooves to crush, maim or break. Horses, Houyhnhnm, large goats, bulls, giraffe, and the bison of North America might have this aspect.
Players can use this aspect to: smash in a barn door, crush infantry underfoot, rear up or stamp to intimidate an opponent.
Referees can use this aspect to: have the character’s hooves accidently crush an expensive watch, have small children be too frightened to approach, or whenever grasping fingers would be more useful than hard hooves.
Sagacious
You are quick to understand what you perceive and constantly analyse your surroundings enabling you to make wise decisions and sound plans. Natural philosophers, expert thief catchers, cunning predators, and benevolent rulers hold this aspect.
Spend an aspect card to: React quickly to sudden danger, detect an ambush be it military or in conversation, plan and execute an ambush of your own, or find hidden prey.
The referee can invoke this aspect to: have the character approached to act as a judge when she would rather stay clear of a dispute, be blackmailed into advising an enemy ruler, or to be targeted by opponents who realise you are coordinating the group’s efforts.
Riding Horse
This beast is more than accustomed to being ridden; it actively aids riders. A riding horse is not trained for combat as so is likely to flee if attacked or startled by gunshot. Dragoons can ride these horses provided the soldiers dismount some distance from the fight.
Spend an aspect card to: aid riding tests and challenges.
Get paid an aspect card or conscience to: have the horse flee from battle or loud noises.
Soar like an Eagle
This creature’s wings are shaped for riding thermals, flying high above the ground, and gliding. Unfortunately, this also means it has a wide turning circle..
Spend an aspect card to: fly for long period of time or to great heights.
Get paid an aspect card or conscience to: hinder attempts to hover or perform tight turns or other aerobatics
Stealthy
You move as soundlessly as a cat or owl. You are also adept at using the shadows to remain unseen and spotting good hiding places. You are so practiced at stealth that you are quiet and fade into the background out of habit.
Spend an aspect card to: move quietly down a hall, shadow someone down a street at night, creep up on a deer, spot a hidden person, or aid intimidation by a sudden appearance.
Get paid an aspect card or conscience to: have a potential love interest overlook the character at a ball, to penalise attempts to befriend rowdy drunks, arouse suspicion by seeming ‘shifty’, and penalise any attempt at performing for an
audience.

Mars, A Savage Setting of Planetary Romance: A Review

by Karl Brown

Review and additional material for Mars, A Savage Setting of Planetary Romance from Adamant Entertainment by Lizard, Gareth-Michael Skarka, Walt Ciechanowski, Aaron Rosenberg, and Jess Nevins. A setting for the Savage Worlds system by Shane Lacy Hensley from Pinnacle Entertainment Group.

Page numbers for Mars, A Savage Setting of Planetary Romance are given as (M#), and for Savage Worlds Deluxe as (SWD#).

I am a long-time fan of the planetary romance genre and have read-though this book multiple times. However my experience with actual play is limited. Any feedback to improve this article is welcome.

From the book’s Introduction:

Welcome to Mars!

Not Mars as it is – airless, most likely lifeless, with only the faintest hints of what might have once been a damp, if not necessarily lush and living, world billions of years in the past. No, this is Mars as it should be and as it was once imagined to be – an ancient, dying, but not yet dead world, a world where a vast canal network reaches from pole to pole, bringing water and life to vast and fantastic cities. A Mars where albino apes run a vast empire in the last surviving jungle, a world where warrior tribes of Green Martians raid the outlying cities of the canal dwellers, a world where, in places dark and quiet and forgotten beneath the surface, ancient and terrible intellects plan dark and dire deeds.

It is a Mars of sky-corsairs, of duels with blade and blaster, of vile plots, fantastic inventions, daring rescues, arena battles, and spectacular stunts. It is a Mars where ancient cities can be discovered and their lost treasures plundered, a Mars where a trek across the dry sea bottoms can yield amazing discoveries, where terrible monsters roam the rocky wastes.

It is the Mars of pulp fiction and Saturday morning serials.

It is now yours.

The genre of this setting is planetary romance, romance in its archaic usage to mean a kind of fantasy. Planetary romance is also called ‘sword and planet’. This genre is pretty much dead but for the uninitiated the introduction above provides a pretty good taste of the exotic and adventurous stories of the genre and the kind of exciting games that could be played. I suspect that one of the reasons Pixar’s John Carter film fell flat was because many viewers had little previous exposure to the genre and it’s conventions.

The Judgment

If you’re like me then you might be short on time and are going to skip to the end and read the judgment. Well to save on scrolling here is it up front. I have a love/hate relationship with this book. The editing is eye-bleedingly woeful leaving a bitter taste for having had paid money to support such sloppy workers. However the setting is a good one. It is not the Mars of Edgar Rice Burroughs, just within the same genre, if you really want to play in that specific world this is not the game for you. Me, I just want to play in the genre and the setting captures the feel of planetary romance perfectly. The setting rules support action-packed daring-do entertainment like that found in the old novels. I found myself enthused about holstering my radium pistol and soaring my scout flyer over the crimson deserts in search of adventure. You’ll need a copy of the Savage Worlds rules, other than that the book is very self contained with everything you need to play multiple sessions at your table. If you’re a fan of swashbuckling styles of play or the old planetary romance genre then this is a must-have. Otherwise save yourself a typo-induced brain haemorrhage and give it the skip.

The Book

Mars was first available for d20. The d20 version used many of the same rules as the Conan game from Mongoose and these additions to the d20 system were a pretty good fit for the setting. The less involved rules of Savage Worlds is an even better fit for the fast paced daring-do of planetary romance adventures. The d20 version had all the hallmarks of a product done in a hurry and on a tight budget including a cover taken from NASA’s copyright-free gallery of images. The later Savage Worlds version has very presentable original cover art featuring a couple of Red Martians in a desperate battle with a horde of Green savages that nicely captures the feel and content of the setting. The flying ships on the cover are totally wrong, but more about that later. The dead tree version is a glossy hardback with 191 glossy black and white pages within. Rather nice to look at and should take many years of game-table abuse. The hardcover version includes an extra 13 page adventure. There is no index, something owners of the hardbound book will miss. There is a table of contents showing both chapters and sections though. If you buy the book keep your receipt, a scan of it sent to the publisher will get you the pdf free, sweet (see http://www.adamantentertainment.com/downloads/[14]). The 180 page PDF has three layers of bookmarks for easy navigation.

Inside there is an introduction and eight chapters: Introduction, Characters, Gear, Setting Rules, Game Mastering, Beasts of Mars, Slavers of Mars, and Encounters. There are also 14 pages of short fiction spread through the book. The interior art includes a number of different styles including line art, shaded full-page grey-scale plates, and the odd photo of the real Martian desert. Usually, I dislike a mish-mash of styles but in this instance it is not too jarring. There is some upper-torso nudity which is completely within genre but the ‘features’ of male and female alike are exaggerated enough to come across as tacky in a few pieces. The biggest problem with this book is a horde of editing issues. There are spelling errors, obvious cut-and-paste issues, setting-out flaws, and grammar mistakes with resulting lack of clarity. One or more of these jarring errors mars virtually every page. This is sloppy and made even more inexcusable by the fact that this is the second iteration following the d20 version. I might be more forgiving if this was fan writing distributed for free, but it isn’t, this is backed by a company and I paid good money for it. Hang your heads in shame. The adventures and other supplements that followed this core release do not seem to suffer this from editorial slackness.

‘Dials’
Throughout the book the authors have deliberately created grey areas for groups to tweak the setting to their liking. This font and colour is used here to discuss these opportunities and as examples describe how I handled each topic.

Short Fiction

Each chapter is prefaced by a short piece of fiction set in on Mars. These are a good introduction to the genre. I’d set them as homework for players who have never read any of the old Scientific Romance novels.

Introduction

Modern readers will be most familiar with the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs (ERB), if only from the Pixar film John Carter, but there were others who wrote this kind of proto-space-opera. The works of ERB are in fact so much more famous than others who wrote in this genre that some reviewers have thought this Mars a poor copy. The Mars presented is a kind of mash-up of the kinds of archetypes found in the genre. Some of the influences are obvious, others less so. Mars does a good job of taking these elements and welding them together into a seamless whole that captures the feel of the genre. The Mars described is not at all like the better-known Mars of Space 1889. The Space 1889 version comes across as a dusty mix of 19th Century India and Egypt. This Mars has all the vibrancy, colour, and miss-imagined high-technology of the planetary romance novels. Where Space 1889 Mars has gunpowder canons and crumbling stone ruins this Mars has radium blaster pistols and scintillating crystal spires. Even the canals are lines of clear water and flawless silvery metal. The book begins with a short history and details of everyday life that breathe life into this exotic world. Exactly the kind of small exotic details found in the old novels. Several diverse nations of Mars are described. I like that there are sections on ‘typical’ characters for each nation to help players create characters that fit within a genre and setting most will be unfamiliar with.

For busy referee’s the nation of Callor Maralin (M15) is the easiest to use as a home base. The culture is dynamic, allows characters good personal freedoms, and warily accepts foreigners within its borders. All these attributes foster diverse and independent adventuring parties that appeal to most players. Furthermore most of the published adventures presume a freewheeling party of adventurers rather than say a cell of paranoid Maranian secret police or a cohort of White Ape Imperial soldiers.
The background material is more than sufficient but still deliberately leaves plenty of blanks for a referee to fill in to taste. For example though several nations are described in detail much of the map is only sketched in enabling you to create your own city-state or other area.

Characters

The core book offers good advice for creating a concept to build your character around (M36), useful for those unfamiliar with the genre. This is not a genre for navel gazing, characters should be dynamic and a little larger than life. Suggested roles include adventurer, companion, outcast, explorer, trickster, and defender. Those who want a little more structure I suggest you could create a concept to suit the setting by considering the following choices: choose a role (M36-37), choose a species (M39-59 and the notes below), choose or invent a homeland (M15-32), and finally choose a profession. This last could be anything suitable to the genre but professional edges provide some in genre examples (M65-69). Finally add a personality trait. Characters begin at novice rank but get 10xp to start with, enough for two Edges, making them a little more varied and competent.

Once you have a concept that fits the setting the rest of character generation follows the same procedures as in Savage Worlds. Like all settings in that system character creation is fast and easy to teach to novice gamers.

PC species

The species of Martians are Red Men, Green Men, White Apes, Grey Men, and Synthe Men. I assume the use of ‘Men’ rather than ‘People’ or ‘Folk’ is an attempt to stay within the usages of the period when the original planetary romance stories were written.

Mars indicates that of the ‘races’ of the planet only the Red Men, Green Men, and White Apes are suitable as player characters. Furthermore it suggests most groups consist of Red Men with perhaps a single member of another species. If you follow this advice, a system to assign roles like that described for Space 1889 in RPG Review 8 could be devised. Alternatively, the referee might allow short term ‘guest appearances’ or have players to create two characters a Red and another more exotic PC; players then take turns playing the one odder PC within the party changing at the start of each adventure.

Mars does indicate that this guidance could be ignored for campaigns showcasing other species and provides write-ups with sufficient detail for PC use for all races. In the genre instances of mix species groups are common. Not only was ERB’s John Carter an Earthman among Red Men, protagonist groups in ERB’s novels have included a Green Man and a scuttling bodiless head. Referee could allow PCs can of any of the races described in the Mars book and still be true to the genre.

Those players familiar with the genre can also suggest rare species of men lingering in the deep tunnels or far off places of the planet. A set of rules to design these other peoples is included in the book (M57) useful for those with older editions of the core rules without the race creation rules now included in Savage Worlds Deluxe.

Red Men

The crimson skinned Red Men are almost like ERB’s Red Martians. They are the ‘normal humans’ of Mars physically and psychologically similar to humans of Earth. There are some differences but nothing too hard to get your head around.

Green Men

Tusked and fearsome, Green Men are obviously based loosely on ERBs Green Hordes. They are smaller than ERBs green giants and have only two arms. Their culture is also quite different to that imagined by ERB.

White Apes

Unlike the Red and Green Men, the white apes have no parallel that I know of in ERB’s stories. The closest well-known equivalents are the Apes in Tim Burton’s version of Planet of the Apes. The civilization described for them contains the kind of tensions typical of the genre.

Grey Men

The Grey Men are a distorted version of the Martians of Wells’ War of the Worlds. While Well’s novel is absolutely not of the planetary romance genre these Martians certainly fit. The genre is filled with secretive and horrific aliens.

The surface dwellers of Mars only know the Greys from rumour and brief terrifying encounters. The rules and written fluff give one version of the how the Reds think the Greys are, the illustrations do not completely match and give another version of the rumours. What is the truth? Only the Greys know.

Greys could rarely be used as PCs or NPCs. A Grey PC in a group of non-Greys would likely be a secretive outcast whose goals aligned with those of the party, for the moment… The Whispering Lord (M28) gives an idea of the kind of Grey character that might be suitable as a PC.

Referees are encouraged in the book to modify the Greys to taste. You could tweak the details, add mesmeric powers, or even use them as a hidden link to some other more terrible secret. The ERB novel Chessmen of Mars has two ideas that could be applied to the Grey Men. Perhaps deep below the surface they are directing their efforts towards survival in a future airless Mars. They may also be evolving towards a bodiless brain, a terrible intellect devoid of the emotions and passions of the flesh. Deep in their hidden cities are huge bodiless brains with ruthless staggering intellects.

Taking inspiration from the drawings in Mars, I add the following to those rules in the book:
Large target, all attacks against the Grey are at +2 to hit.

They have six thicker shorter ambulatory tentacles and four longer manipulative ones. However, they generally have a ‘handedness’ preferring one tentacle over the others much as most other men are right handed. These tentacles do not provide extra attacks.

They cannot ride, most Martian animals are too small to bare them and the Grey Men have no experience with riding beasts. They cannot begin with riding skill and will struggle to find in-game experiences to justify gaining it.

Use Grey machines. Advanced machines and vehicles manufactured by the Greys require someone of the Greys’ unique shape to operate them. The reverse is sometimes true but for the most part the flexible tentacles of a
Grey can operate most Martian hand held devices and control panels. They have Alien Minds (M55) with respect to Earthmen and the other peoples of Mars.

Just as some humans are not strongly handed or are ambidextrous, some Greys have good coordination with two or more manipulators; this can be modelled by purchasing edges from your normal allowance. Suggested edges include: Ambidextrous, Florentine, Counterattack, Two-fisted, or Frenzy (this last would represent attacking with multiple tentacles rather than a frenzy which would be so unlike the cold Grey Men).

Earth Men

While Mars does not give an exact date for Earth, just that it’s between 1850 and 1950. I suggest the date on Earth begins at 1867, shortly after the American Civil War. This is the same starting year as the Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter narrative. However, since Mars is isolated from Earth the referee could really set the Earth date to anywhen. Perhaps, those Victorian age Earth Men are unknowingly time travelling and Earth is in the dinosaur epoch.

Similarly, how Earth Men find themselves on Mars is up to the referee (M54) but the options are not properly discussed within the book. I would suggest leaving this a mystery.

For example: recently, several Earthmen have awoken in remote places on Mars with no memory of how they got to this old world. Some say Earth Men on Mars were abducted by the Greys and brought across the void for some unknown reason. Others point out that there is no evidence that the Greys can sail between worlds and wonder if some ancient unseen power is at work. There are rumours that when the corpses of Earth Men are dissected small odd black cubes are found buried in their guts…

Mars also discusses how a referee may or may not give Earth Men special powers when they arrive on Mars. A selection of options is given for you to choose from. I personally prefer all Earth Men on Mars to manifest the same extraordinary abilities due to the differences in gravity and temperature on the worlds; Earth Men find the hottest day on Mars cool enough for long sleeves. In my campaign humans on Mars have:

Alien mind
Disease immunity
Mighty Thews
Also -2 to resist cold.
Martians on Earth
It seems logical to me that Martians on Earth would be affected by the inverse of the effects of Mars on Earthmen. Therefore I provide this example rule.

Though rare, in some of the old stories Martians find themselves on Earth. It is expected that Martians if ever taken to Earth would experience Alien mind, disease immunity, +2 to resist cold, and the inverse of Mighty Thews (see below).

Puny Thews

The higher gravity of Earth has had a noticeable affect on the Martian. His jumping capacity is automatically 1”lower (minimum 1”), and his encumbrance is calculated as if his strength was 1 die lower. A character with a d4 for Strength is reduced to carrying a maximum of 20 pounds for his load limit (SWD49) This has no effect on melee combat.
Cost: -2 points

Synthe Men

These are synthetic men. They are not robots, nor are they clones. They are artificial lifeforms created through advanced chemistry. This kind of being was common in older science fiction prior to the 1980s. The Synthe Men as described are exactly the kind of thing one finds in the genre without being a copy of any particular authors work (as far as I know). Synthe Men are created for a specific purpose in the system for maintaining and defending the canals, they have no life beyond their work. A PC Synthe Man might be on a mission to acquire a rare component for a pump station or might be a trouble-shooting unit dispatched to investigate a potential threat to the canals. A Synthe Man makes the most sense in a campaign centred on a growing threat to the flow of the water. However, a particularly well-maintained pumping station may have a surplus Synthe Man that can be dispatched to proactively seek out threats to the canals. Ordering a character like this to seek out travelling companions provides extra protection without expending the thinly stretched resources of the canal maintenance system thus providing a rationale for one to join an adventuring group.

Skills

Generally the skills section contains a few tweaks and notes to the core Savage Worlds skill rules.

Guts

Guts is the skill for resisting fear effects. Note that all characters get a free d4 in this skill. It would have been better if this was noted in the character generation section rather than hiding it away in the skills section. Since Savage Worlds Deluxe this skill has been removed as a core rule, regardless of the version of Savage Worlds you are using I’d remove this skill when using this setting.

Military Characters

Some background material for the fighting forces of the various cultures of Mars can be found in the booklet Warriors of Mars. Military characters might find ample opportunity to use the Knowledge (Battle) skill (SWD92), warfare is a common occurrence in the genre.

Knowledge: Wire Pattern

Here I add a new skill. The ‘language’ used to interface with the machine minds when mechanical men are not available. Question s for the Machine Mind need to be crafted as patterns of wire and inserted into the machine to be read. Synth Men automatically have flawless knowledge of this language. Part craft and part mathematics this ‘language’ is not included within the languages skill which covers normal spoken and written communication between living people.

Hindrances and Edges

Edges and hindrances are character details much like the advantages/disadvantages of GURPS or the Feats of d20. Alterations here include jettisoning anything related to wealth, some professional edges, and a few other edges and hindrances. New hindrances are introduced: Cocky, Stigma, and Xenophobic. The new Edges mostly support the kinds of lightly armoured flashy fighting seen in the source material, these are: Dirty Fighter, Really Dirty Fighter, Improved Defence, Riposte, Improved Riposte, Sword and Blaster, Improved Sword and Blaster, Precision Strike, Improved Precision Strike, Spot Weakness, Wall of Steal (referring to flashing blades not armour). Many of these could be of use to those playing pirate or swashbuckler settings. Other new edges support archetypes of the genre: Brilliant Scientist, Failsafe, Brute Warrior, Canaller, Criminal, Doctor, Engineer, Explorer, Guardian, Fencer, Military Elite, Priest, and Sky-Corsair.

Arcane Backgrounds

In Savage Worlds Arcane Backgrounds are Edges that allow a character to use some kind of power. In Mars these are limited to Weird Science and perhaps Psionics. There is no magic in the genre.

Weird Science

Super-science and incredible devices are a feature of the genre. This background enables PCs to invent things as per the Savage Worlds rules. Weird Science is most often held by Greys and more vital cultures of the Red Men like the Academy of Avak Callor. Occasionally a Machine Mind holds a vast store of ancient designs giving it the appearance of creative invention.

Mindwitches

Psionics is an optional extra and notes for its use are included in Mars (M62). Mars makes the case that it is usually the villains that have mind-powers, however in the classic ERB Mars everyone has low-level telepathy and I can think of at least one instance of an ally with substantial psi-powers. Taking my cue from the ERB stories my version of Mars has only telepathy type psi. Only the following powers are available to mindwitches: beastfriend, confusion, fear, mind reading, puppet, succour, slumber, stun, slow and quickness; these last two represent alterations to neural speed and clarity. Note I do not use Soul Drain.

In my Mars mesmeric powers are rare, manifesting in about 1 in 10 000 Martians. The most populous city on Mars, Avak Callor, is the home to half a million people but holds only about 50 psiers. Earthmen are almost never mindwitches, those few yogi and mesmerists that find themselves on Mars discover that all Martians have Alien Mind (+2 Spirit rolls to resist) against the Earth-spiritualist’s powers.

Starting Equipment

Mars gives us no prices for equipment and no guidance on what gear characters begin with beyond write down what you want and then run it by the referee. Generally, an exact accounting of every possession is not required instead important resources and possessions typically carried into danger are recorded. This may be a little too unstructured for some groups.

While jettisoning the rules for buying and selling may seem a little strange and is definitely open to abuse it is also a huge dial for you to twiddle and adjust the setting to taste. For starting equipment: Are your characters low born youths just embarking on a career of daring do? Then give them basic weapons, clothes, a pack and little else. If the characters are scheming ambassadors and aristocrats then bring on the sky-ships and jewelled radium holdout pistols. A White Ape crack fighting squad will have heavy armour and weapons but Red Nomads probably wont. Your party might even contain a mix of these and other character types.
For those wanting a little more structure I off the following guidance designed with a diverse party in mind. Please adjust to taste.

Characters are assumed to have all manner of furniture, clothes, and other possessions appropriate to their concept at home but the only items that really matter are those that they take into danger.
All starting equipment should be appropriate to culture, social status, and profession. All characters should note down the following at creation:

One residence, not a vehicle but a nomad tent is permitted. Typical residences include: gleaning palace, barracks’ bunk, canal side dwelling, polar jungle villa, ruin, nomad’s tent, crystal spire apartment etc. The residence could also double as a workplace such as an orchard, workshop etc. In these cases a small living area is assumed. All residences are furnished and stocked appropriately for the character background.
Sets of clothes and jewellery of number and type appropriate to status.

A pack, sack, harness, or similar for carrying goods.

One Weapon, only a fool would travel Mars without one, with a holster, scabbard, quiver, or baldric to carry
it.

One possession related to each skill the character has at least a d6 in. These could be from the four lists in the book or other items.

The following are discussed in Warriors of Mars (WM)

Ballista, catapult, boiling oil pot, battering ram, ladder, siege tower.
*medical kits of all kinds range from the herbs and splits of primitive cultures to the precise healing rays and powered dissection tools of the Greys.

Most cultures do not keep slaves but characters might also have servants. Machine minds may have Synthe Men surplus to the immediate needs of maintaining the canals. All of these novice extras will avoid dangerous situations and combat, they don’t adventure. Characters who want help on their adventures should invest Edges to get that help.

Setting Rules

A series of setting rules look like they would do a good job of encouraging the heroic action of the genre and make for faster-paced and fun game play.

Heroic Survival: important characters are not killed by damage instead they are incapacitated. Killing a PC or important NPC requires a ‘finishing move’ against the now defenceless foe, something the heroes of the genre would never do. This rule should encourage players to throw their characters into danger and generally be heroic as demanded by the genre conventions.

Stunt Actions: the player describes an action in a flashy manner that adds difficulty and is rewarded with a bennie (a point that can be spent later for a game effect, a bit like a fate point in FATE). Why take the stairs when you can swing on the chandelier then leap down?

Story Declarations: these work like similar rules in FATE games. The player spends a bennie to add a small useful detail to the scene. A good way to emulate the coincidences and luck finds seen in the genre; this rule should also help prevent the action from stalling at the table.

Henchmen and Mooks: there is a fan-favourite scene in the ERB novels where a hero takes on a horde of fierce giant Green Martians with only his animal companion by his side…and decimates his foes! These tissue-paper foes allow for that sort of over-the-top out-numbered fighting. Savage Worlds can already handle pretty big fights well without resorting to the mass combat rules, the use of Mooks enables you to put the Green horde on your table.

Miniatures

While we are on the topic of combat, Savage Worlds is designed around miniatures (or counters) and not using them removes some tactical richness. A quick look at the Savage Worlds forums will tell you plenty of people run the system without miniatures, no problem. However, there is no line of miniatures for the setting. You could use any counters really, buttons are cheep. However there are companies that sell miniatures portraying peoples of ERB’s Mars that could be adapted (snip off the extra arms on the Green Men). Many companies also cast ‘pseudo-Egyptian fantasy figures that could be painted with crimson skin. There are numerous intelligent gorilla and yeti figures that will pass as White Apes. Also useful are packs of steam-punk or science fiction weapons that can be added to fantasy figures to give them that ‘sword and planet’ look.
Here is a link to a forum discussing where to get miniatures for this setting:https://www.peginc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=37830&sid=07af63cbf9d04eca0...[15]

Airships

Personally, I think the term ‘airship’ invokes images of the Hindenberg and the Goodyear Blimp. The smallest of these vehicles is about the size of a canoe, hardly a ship, so perhaps ‘Flyer’ would be even better. While I’m dispelling assumptions older gamers might imagine the Space 1889’s stately Martian sail ‘kites’ and chuffing British aerial steam launches, also wrong. The Airships of Mars are like those of the ERB novels, advanced aerial vehicles more manoeuvrable than a helicopter, as fast as a jet, and with practically unlimited range. If you are having trouble picturing them the Pixar movie John Carter, Jabba’s pleasure barge in Return of the Jedi, and the illustrations within the Mars book will help. The rules recommend you re-scale the measurements by a factor of four or more but then leave you to do this yourself rather than having speeds in ‘ship scale’ and ‘human scale’. This is kinda olde school but those used to having their hand held might balk. There is a rule to cover aerial battles without the use of miniatures. Finally, Mars was written before the Savage Worlds Deluxe edition and therefore uses the old climb rules. In the new system I’d rate Climb by ship size as follows: Small 4, Medium 3, Large 3, Huge 2, Gargantuan 2, Colossal 1.

Game Mastering

A good overview of the history of the genre is provided. This section was written before the Pixar film John Carter that captured the genre fairly well. A section on the thematic elements of the genre is provided. Even if you have read some of the old genre novels having someone actually clearly state the genre conventions is really useful. The specific advice for creating adventures in the setting and genre is pretty good. There is a set of tables to create adventure outlines that is useful when your creative juices get sluggish. As well as these stand out features there is also an adequate description of the basics of adventure design and NPC creation.

Beasts of Mars

This chapter contains only nine creatures, a few more would have been nice but those provided do represent the weirdness of beasts in the genre. After this is ‘Making it Martian’, a series of random tables to modify existing creatures into suitably odd Martian organisms. This was one of my favorite features of the d20 version and it is nice to see this useful tool presented for the savage worlds system. Referees of space opera or Cthulhu-esque settings would also get a lot of mileage out of these tables.

Slavers of Mars

This chapter contains the titular adventure (30 pages), and 14 one-paragraph adventure seeds. A shorter adventure “Caravan of Mars” (13 pages) is included in the hardcover version. The first adventure “Slaver’s of Mars” assumes that the PCs are mostly Red Men mercenaries. I would have preferred a premise that could cater for a greater diversity of PCs. That the PCs are to be paid in read meat, a rarity on Mars, is a nice touch of the ‘exotic everyday’ of a kind common in novels of the genre. As the plot proceeds the players encounter a lot of the fun stuff in the setting: sky pirates, alien carnivores, savages, dark pits, schemes, rescues! This adventure should provide several sessions of play and a good introduction to the setting.
Encounters
This chapter provides random encounter tables and a selection of NPCs ready for use by the referee. There are 14 stock NPCs and eight fully detailed personalities.

Support

The setting has adequate support. There are 10 supplements available as pdf only, mostly adventures. The supplements have evocative cover art, another good tool to help players new to the genre to grok it. The company has character sheets and wallpapers on their website but does not host any form of community. This book uses the Savage Worlds rules and as such many supplements for that rules set will be of use on Mars.

Machine Minds of Mars!

by Karl Brown

A new PC species for Mars in Savage Worlds

Additional material for Mars, A Savage Setting of Planetary Romance from Adamant Entertainment by Lizard, Gareth-Michael Skarka, Walt Ciechanowski, Aaron Rosenberg, and Jess Nevins. A setting for the Savage Worlds system by Shane Lacy Hensley from Pinnacle Entertainment group.

Page numbers for Mars, A Savage Setting of Planetary Romance are given as (M#), and for Savage Worlds Deluxe as (SWD#).

For centuries the canals of Mars have brought life to the city-states of this dying world. Countless Red princesses and daring sky corsairs have lived and died, empires rose and fell, and still the canals are sacrosanct. To ensure the neutrality of the canals long ago the designer’s created Synthetic Men to maintain and defend the pumps and channels; men with no nation, no family, no king. Over the Synthe Men the builders placed the massive Machine Minds of Mars, calculating intellects with only one incorruptible purpose, the water must flow.

Some players or referees might enjoy the challenge of portraying the calculating machine minds that oversee the canal network; now you can. These have not been play tested but are based on the rules for designing new PC species provided in Savage World Deluxe Edition and Mars, A Savage Setting of Planetary Romance. You will need both of these books to use this article. Not recommended for inexperienced roleplayers.

The Machine Minds of the pumping stations are immobile entities of sparks and gears built into the foundations of the titanic polar pumping stations (M31). They act on the world by remotely controlled Mechanical Men and by issuing orders to Synthe Men. Machine Minds analyze the world though sensors monitoring the water levels and machine functions over each hemisphere of the world, the great sensor tower that caps each pumping station, and remote sensors within Mechanical Men and mole drills. The Machine Minds are deaf, Synthe Men querying a great Machine Mind give it questions in the form of complex patterns of wire and receiving answers in a terse, artificial voice which is obeyed unquestioningly. Here we assume the minds can see from their senor tower and via Mechanical Men through a variant of the imager technology (M12).

As well as employing Synthe Men servants the Machine Minds can remotely control Mechanical Men that work in the heat of their radium pile power plants and great mole drills. It is assumed most of these servants and remote devices are required for maintenance of the canals leaving only a few for scouting out new sources of water or radium, and potential threats to the canals, i.e. adventures. A Machine Mind can control these remote drones anywhere within one polar hemisphere of Mars provided it has the cooperation of the other Machine Minds. This cooperation is usually taken for granted unless the referee wishes to run an adventure where a ‘malfunctioning’ mind is isolated by its peers.

Without cooperation the machine can only control remotes within about 200 kilometers. To adventure in the opposite hemisphere or without the cooperation of its peers the machine mind must set up a relay of drone vehicles, one for each 200 kilometers beyond the equator. It is unlikely that many drone vehicles will be surplus to allow this.

Like Synthe Men, Machine Minds have designations such as Overmind TX63SF5 rather than names. In terms of role most Machine Minds will be Defenders (M37) of the canals but other roles could be envisaged, especially for PCs. How about an Outcast (M37) shunned by other Machine Minds for a glitch in its programming that makes it value the lives of the builders (Red Martians) more than maintaining the flow of water? Or a Mind whose pumping station has long since become run-down beyond repair and now seeks to explore the Mars to root out potential threats to the canals. A Machine Mind cares only for the canals, this makes it difficult to justify their presence in an adventuring group unless the campaign revolves around a growing threat to the canal network. One way to handle this is for the player to have two characters, the Machine Mind and a Red Martian, but only play one or the other during any single adventure. Alternatively, a Mind Overseeing an exceptionally well maintained pumping station may be able to spare a Mechanical Man to pro-actively go out into the world and look for threats to the water-flow, travelling with an adventuring party provides extra protection without expending further limited resources.

Machine minds never develop psi powers.

Machine Mind Traits

The Mechanical mind is a huge stationary machine that acts on the world through loyal Synthe Men and remote controlled machines. Details of the machine minds and their polar stations are discussed in the core book (M31).
The character consists of the Machine Mind and the Mechanical Man that serves as its ‘Body’

The Mind

Thinking Machine (0): the machine mind has only smarts and spirit attributes. They receive the usual 5pt to spend on attributes.
It has the usual allotment of skills. Pace is zero. The Mind has a Toughness of 12 but this is rarely needed during play because the Mind is ensconced within a pump station fortress. Machine Minds cannot take physical Edges themselves. What’s a ‘physical edge’? The categories ‘mental’ and ‘physical’ are not part of the classification of Edges in Savage Worlds. Referee’s will need to make a call on each Edge or Hindrance on a case by case basis. Physical Edges are those that are an inherent part of the structure. Mental Edges are far more numerous they include those related to training, social status, reflexes, education etc.

Construct (2): (M54, SWD152)

Detached (-2): since its mind is safe far away within a fortress the Machine Mind does not fear death, it will risk the Mechanical Man under its control more readily than men of flesh would place their bodies in danger. This results in the same sorts of behavior seen from the Over Confident major hindrance.

The water must flow: (-2): the mind is totally dedicated to maintaining the canals. All potential missions are viewed with this motivation in mind. While the machine will investigate potential threats, it will ignore suffering, warfare, art, etc as long these do not impact on the canals. This programming equates to a major vow.

Mind of Gears (-1): Because the machine lacks empathy and creativity, speaks in a cold monotone, and has no interest in any subject not impacting on the canals it suffers -4 Charisma. Its mechanical brain grants +2 to Spirit rolls to resist mind-affecting powers.

Maintain the pumps (1): the mind begins with 1d6 in the repair skill.

Deaf with many ears: (0) The machine is deaf but it can hear through its Mechanical men. The Mind can speak High Martian like a native, though some continue to use archaic words from the time of the canal builders.

Mechanical Man (5): Each mind begins with a single surplus remote controlled Mechanical Man that can be used for exploration. Mechanical Men should have their own character sheets. The Mechanical Man is effectively the character’s body. It is possible that a Machine Mind could be unable to free up a Mechanical Man for adventuring should the free starting one be destroyed. If this occurs the player may choose to remove the character from play and create a new PC, just as if a more ordinary PC had been killed. Having additional surplus Mechanical Men available for adventuring costs Edges (see below).
The combination of the Mechanical Man and Machine Mind effectively produce a PC with 10pt to spend on Attributes hence the high cost.

Remote Controller: (3) the mind itself is almost impossible to destroy protected as it is within the fortress of the pumping station. Immobile the Mind acts through remotely controlled machines and can control multiple Mechanical Men and vehicles at once. ‘Killing’ a Machine Mind would be a deadly adventure in its own right. However, a Machine Mind PC that runs out of spare Mechanical Men is cannot go on adventures and is effectively dead.
SUBTOTAL: +6

The ‘Body’

Mechanical Man
Lumbering robots of gears and wires they are about the same height as a human of similar strength but weigh twice as much. Create these as Novice Rank characters, without the +10xp awarded to PCs. Mechanical Men are assigned equipment like any other starting character taking into consideration the Machine Mind’s skills.
Like Synthe Men and Machine Minds, Mechanical Men have designations not names.

Salvage (0): The artificial society of canal maintenance could not have survived all these centuries if they were not masters of salvage and repair. The player should record the number of advances invested in her first Mechanical Man. Whenever this body is ‘killed’ reduce this number by one. If the new tally is zero or more that Mechanical Man can be repaired at a Synthe Man facility or polar pumping station then returned to play with one less advance. If the tally is -1 the Mechanical Man is damaged beyond repair. This is equivalent to the Replacement Characters rule used by men of flesh (SWD47).

Remote controlled (0): machine men have only agility, strength, and vigor attributes. They use the Machine Minds charisma and parry. They still begin with 5pt to spend on attributes. They possess no minds, mental edges, or skills of their own. They may have physical edges and hindrances added to their design. Note that unlike primitive Earthling communications technology the control beams are truly instantaneous, there is no signal lag. (0).

Made for the radium pile (2): +4 resistance to Heat. (2)
Construct (0 as is ‘shared’ with the mind).
Lumbering (-4): Pace 3 with 1d4 running dice, -1 to parry. Mechanical men have a lumbering stilted stride unlike that of true men of flesh.

Limited range (-2): Though the mechanical men contain more advanced versions of the technology of the viewers even this is limited. A Mechanical Man must stay within 1 kilometer of a pumping station or large Machine Mind installation or vehicle (such as a mole drill) or freeze and shut down. All cities built at the time of the canal builders contain a relay tower for machine mind control beams. The communication beams are invisible and able to harmlessly penetrate most walls, buildings, water, and vegetation. However, if line of sight between the Mechanical Man and transmitter is blocked by more than 10m of continuous solid material, such as a hill, the connection will be severed.

The character will often be able to move a drone vehicle to re-establish the connection reactivate the Mechanical Man. Failing that other characters might drag the ‘unconscious’ Mechanical Man back within the reach of the control beams.

The Mechanical Men are capable of acting as control relays themselves but with a range of only 10 meters and the beam is blocked by only 1m of continuous solid material.
SUBTOTAL: -4
TOTAL: +6-4=+2, equivalent to a humans free edge.

Edge: Extra Mechanical Man
Requirements: Legendary, Wild card.
Additional Mechanical Men can be obtained at a cost of an advance (they are each an Edge). Generally additional or replacement Mechanical Men are only available at the character’s own pumping station and may take some time to travel to where they are needed. The ‘Salvage’ trait above does not apply to these additional Mechanical Men; like Sidekicks (SWD42), Extra Mechanical Men that are destroyed are not automatically replaced and any advances invested in the lost men are also lost.

Equipment

Machine minds are allocated equipment just like any other character. Their equipment should be on par with the rest of the group. Their vehicles, if any, are remote drones operated through the control beam network, the vehicles have no controls for people of flesh to drive them.

Mole drills
Mechanical minds also control huge mole drills. These 200ton machines are considered ‘equipment’ in game terms. Mole drills are not typically armed but can inflict terrible damage by ramming opponents.
Acc/TS: 2/8 above ground, 1/3 burrowing. The mole drill can operate at great pressures and underwater.
Toughness: 20 (5)
Crew: 0+3

Notes: tracked, night vision, heavy armour. Limited range as per Mechanical Men except the more sophisticated mole drill will blindly continue to follow a pre-determined route if the connection is severed. Vital underground missions are performed by multiple drills each acting as a relay for the next. The controlling mind can see both within and without the machine but the mole drill is deaf. The drill has no controls and cannot be driven by men of flesh. Sythne Men fashion precise patterns of wire to communicate with the machinery; Mechanical Men use their own control beams.

Sky Cranes and Repair Barges
Some Machine Minds have control of drone airships and watercraft. Usually these lift equipment and Synthe Men to repair sites along the canal network but a PC might have one surplus it can use for ‘adventuring’. Like mole drills, these vehicles provide vision for the mechanical mind but are ‘deaf’. The vehicles have no controls and cannot be driven by men of flesh. Sythne Men fashion precise patterns of wire to communicate with the machinery; Mechanical Men use their own control beams.

Knowledge: Wire Pattern

A new skill. The ‘language’ used to interface with the machine minds when Mechanical Men are not available. Machine minds and Synthe Men automatically have flawless knowledge of this language. This ‘language’ is not included with the languages skill.

GURPS Lake Town Middle Earth

by Michael Cole

In previous articles, I wrote of using Tolkien’s Middle Earth as a campaign location, the changes that would be required. Here, I will detail the process taken in setting up the campaign.

Campaign Style
The first question is one of style – what sort of campaign are you looking for? For myself, I wanted an open world campaign, a sandbox, if you like, in which players could go anywhere and I would be able to find things for them to do. This, naturally, impacted my decision of where and when to set the campaign.

When and Where
Whilst recent versions of Middle Earth gaming material have set their materials close to the time of the War of the Ring, at least partially due to interference from Tolkien Enterprises and licencing, I rejected this era due to the fact that it did not lend itself to open world gaming, for several reasons.
The world at this time, particularly in the books, seems sparser and harder. Whilst yes, you can get a nice gritty campaign happening with this, these sorts of campaign are tougher on players as they have minimal safe havens, and as such, tend to not have as much long-term potential. It’s either succeed or perish.
Given that the events of the books are happening at this time, and that the players will be aware of this, this leaves you with three options: -
Let them play the fellowship, which would then degenerate into a TSR Daragonlance-style set of adventures, where players would be expected to follow the set plotline and would be punished if they deviated
Let them play the off-siders, those who go and do the boring stuff while the major players are elsewhere. Even less satisfying, as whom wants to do adventures that they know will not have any effect on the major storyline.
Completely ignore the events of the books – most players would simply not allow this to occur.

As such, I decided to go with the Iron Crown Enterprises (ICE) default time setting of TA1640. The reasons are as follows.
1. It provides a reason for the PCs to go adventuring. Generally, most folks like comfort and ease, and it will normally take an event to cause adventures. Something externally must happen. TA1640 is set four years after the great plague, and such a globally catastrophic event will upset the natural order, and cause massive changes in the status quo. This provides many opportunities for adventures and reasons as to why people would have to make their own way in the world.
2. It provides a wide variety of opportunities. The world at this time is very unsettled. The major realms of Arnor and Gondor, whilst still at least partially in existence, are in decline to various extents, and have nowhere near as much influence. The Shadow, in the forms of Angmar and Dol Guldur, is certainly prevalent but is definitely not all-encompassing. In short, it is a time of relatively even conflict, and that encourages aspirations.
3. Most importantly, it is new, and allows the players to create their own story of greatness, rather than either repeating the story of the books, or even worse, acting as mere bit-players in the story of the War of the Ring. Everyone wants to take centre stage, and to either restrict players to taking part in an already-written story, or merely to support such a story to its natural already-dictated solution would be annoying. TA1640 is far enough before the events of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings that the players can have a major effect on the world without stopping the events of the close of the age from occurring.

I might also add the ICE materials are extremely good, and whilst now rare and expensive, are well worth obtaining and using. There are also still quite a number of people who are dedicated to keeping Middle Earth, and in particular, the ICE vision of Middle Earth alive as a gaming resource. It would make sense to make use of this.

As for the where, I decided on the Laketown region to the north-east of Mirkwood, for the following reasons: -
1. The region will be familiar to those who have read The Hobbit.
2. It has various ICE modules detailing the environment, Northern Mirkwood Campaign Guide and Esgaroth City Guide being essential, but with others detailing surrounding areas.
3. It provides a frontier-style environment, which is conducive to adventures. Safe zones surrounded by unsettled, unknown or uncharted areas ripe for exploration and possible plunder.
4. Given that it is populated by (human) peoples similar to Germanic peoples, the cultural shifts should be simpler for players to initially understand. Place names will be in Old English, which will be at least semi-familiar to English speakers, and most players will have at least a passing familiarity with Dark Ages England or Vikings or the like, which will assist them in understanding what the cultural norms are.
5. The settlements are not too large, no cities with only two sizable towns (Esgaroth and Dale) which reduces the amount of preparation at the point where you are unfamiliar with what the players will be looking for in civilisation.
6. On the flip-side of this, it is not a backwater, but is a major trading hub between various different realms – the Elves of Mirkwood, the Dwarves of the Iron Hills, the Easterlings, the Dorwinrin, the Eothriam and the Gondorians. This allows lots of plotlines to be drawn, and characters of various backgrounds to be playable without being unusual for the region.
7. It is less civilised and the people are more insular, thus allowing players to get away with more mayhem than most normal civilised people would allow. And what would players be if they didn’t believe that laws didn’t apply to them?

First Step - Adventures
The first step is the longest. It is establishing which adventures can be used. This took quite a few months, and was mainly occupied by reading or rereading every adventure that I could get my hands on, and determining whether (a) it could be used in the setting., (b) what modifications would be needed., (c) where abouts it could be used., and (d) how it could be dovetailed into other adventures.

To assist in this, I have both a document and a map of the area. All adventures were given a code, normally consisting of an acronym for the publisher, followed by a dot, followed by an acronym or number for the adventure themselves. This produced acronyms such as: -
* TSR.L1 – The TSR AD&D adventure, “The Secret of Bone Hill”
* ICE.LT22.1 – MERP Laketown Module adventure, “Highway Ambush”
* JG.P7/2 – Judges Guild Pegasus Issue 7, Adventure 2, “The Ruined Tower of Mabeleck”

From this, I would make brief notes in the document about the adventure, as in changes that would need to be made to fit it in. These could run from a single sentence to a couple of pages. I would also label the map with the acronym at the appropriate location. This ended up being like a big jigsaw puzzle. The large adventures would be placed first, and these in turn would lead to smaller adventures. It was more a matter of sorting them out in my mind first, before becoming too committed.

As an example, the first placed adventure was the TSR AD&D module N1 – Against the Cult of the Reptile God (I detailed how to rewrite this for Middle Earth in a previous issue of this magazine). Given that it was a large village (Orlane, renamed Hwaetstow to fit in with the Old-English naming scheme) in a settled wheat-growing region, the obvious location for this was north-west of Esgaroth, and just south of the marshes. This is a wide protected area, with the ability, by turning the map 180o, to have the required water flow.

But once this was placed, it naturally lead to further adventures. In the basement of the inn was kept a ghoul as a prisoner – where did he come from? He was obviously kidnapped but from where? From this, came a World of Farland (http://www.farlandworld.com[16]) adventure titled, “The Quick and the Dead” This can then be set to the south of Hwaetstow on the roadback to Esgaroth, renamed Níehsta (OE - Neighbours), with the map rotated 90o anti-clockwise. This then leads to further adventures – we need to remove the church, but where the Sherriff’s post is, there is a large building that could be used as a manor – manorial estates make more sense in these times than free villages, particularly given that it needs a large graveyard. But what happened to the manor? And why did the ghouls originally come here?

From this, we come across a rather famous Call of Cthulhu adventure, “Paper Chase”, found in the Cthulhu Companion Adventure from Chaosium Inc (Chapter 5). We can then make the estate a former Gramuz holding for an offshoot of the Frithas clan, named the Perci clan. Thomas Kimball (renamed Tomas Kimsen) is the last of the Perci clan, and invited the ghouls, as being friends he had met and got on with. We then end up with reasonably friendly cthulhu-type ghouls, rather than the D&D-style ghouls, which works a lot better. The next question is where did Tomas meet the ghouls? From this, we need some sort of fissure into the earth, and so on we go. Note that next issue, I hope to provide further details on using ghouls in Middle Earth.

Likewise, we can build on the story of the Naga. It is obviously new in the marshes, but where did it come from, and why did it move? Given its obvious power, being a Maia, it would have required a lot of opposition to get it to shift an established position. The obvious cause would be the awakening of the Dragons in the Withered Heath. From here, we can track a path across the plains over time that the players can follow back if they so want. Given that it is a snake-creature, there are quite a number of adventures that use the Egyptian god of Set as their foe. Whilst Set will not work in this setting, they can all be modified to instead fit the Naga. Likewise, characters from the adventure can be reused – I quite liked the personality of Misha Devi, and think that it would be a waste to lose – she could make a perfect recurring characters, and could gradually change from villain to unlikely ally to even friend over the course of several adventures, so I looked for other adventures as I placed them as to where she could be reused.

Even the location could be reused. Two adventures from the TSR magazine, Dungeon, can easily be modified, and would allow the setting to be a living changing environment. “Cry Wolf”, from Dungeon Issue 102, is set in a small town near some woods at the time of a spring festival called the Festival of Flowers. If “Against the Cult of the Reptile God” was conducted in spring, then this festival would become the aniversary of the freeing of the town from the Naga, which means that the adventures would definitely be invited back. All you would need to do is through in through the previous year, some unexplained issues with wolvish attacks and it will all come together nicely. Likewise, “Forest of Blood”, from Dungeon Issue 103, could be used the following year, or even in the same year at the summer or autumn festival, and fits in well as a plot against the elves who are located nearby.

This process all takes some time, and a lot of patience, but eventually; a picture emerges of possibilities. From here, we move on to the next step.

Second Step – Regions and Populations
The next phase is to go through what you have, and ensure that there exists some consistency. This should mostly have been done in step one, but this is where you filter what you have already done.

One issue I find with the ICE publications is that they tend to spread things out too much, such that we have an adventure in the Lake Town module where the adventurers would have to travel for several days to get some kids back from a troll that kidnapped them. No troll is going to travel for several days on the off-chance that she might find some kids to capture – the locations need to be within several hours of each other. The vast distances of travel may be fine for the books, but remember that during the books, they are travelling through relatively deserted areas. In populated areas, such as The Shire, Bree and Gondor, communities were much closer.

The rule of thumb I use here is indeed a rule of thumb. The scale on the large ICE maps is 1 inch, which is about the length of the top joint of my thumb, to 20 miles, which is about a general days travel. By using my thumb, I can work out rough travel times between locations, and thus try to have connections between each days travel. Not exactly high-tech, but it works.

Once you get distances to be acceptable, you can then start clustering. If you define regions in the map, and have roughly similar locations in those regions, it becomes easier to give an overall picture to the players, thus giving them more of a sense of familiarity. Thus we have clustered around Esgaroth, a couple of small farming communities. To the west near to the forest, we have distinct farming communities. From north to south, we have Hwaetstow, as mentioned previously, being a grain-growing region. Then small community farms to the south.

Further south, directly west of Londaroth, exists a large cooperative farming community which is embroiled in a struggle with a large logging enterprise. Further south towards the swamps is a largish farming community of humans integrated with the only collection of hobbits in the area.

Nestled in the eaves of the forest are various smaller more isolated communities, including one community that features a Veleda, the germanic equivilent of the sybils (see image at right)

Around the lake travelling north from Esgaroth are: -
* A small town featuring the riff-raff and ne’er-do-wells left from the plague. Allows thieves guild-type adventures.
* A small town actively keeping the memory of an early travelling missionary, based on the stories of Cuthbert of Lindesfarne.
* An independent community with its own proud military (mainly long-bow) traditions – see Robin Hood-type adventures.

Coming down the other side of the lake, we have: -
* The sole-remaining Dunedain estate in the north, a castle built around an old Elvish tower from the first age.
* The dairy cattle farming region.
* The sheep farming region.

This then gets expanded into larger areas. I had a number of adventures that had a fairy-type feel, so the section of forest immediately to the west of Esgaroth was designated the Fae Woods, and all such adventures clustered there. That way, when the NPCs talk about it, the players should have a rough idea of what they will find even without going there.

South of that is a section of woods inhabited by a goblin clan called the Skrikkikai Scarai (Screaming Wolves) – I needed some goblin opponents for some adventures, and managed to translate a few of them to all use the same clan. Again, all NPCs will be aware of them, so the players should be aware of their existence before entering the woods.

It takes a while, and involves some rearranging and manipulation, but it certainly makes for a more believable land. And it keeps interactions with NPCs more consistent, thus leading the players to get more a feel of being part of the region rather than strangers.

Third Step – Linking of Adventures
The next step is to go through the adventures and develop some common threads linking them, so that the players can choose to follow some of the threads through multiple adventures. The dark mysterious conspiracy tends to get overdone somewhat, particularly in Middle Earth, where so much can be blamed on Machinations of the Big Bad, so it helps to make the links more urbane. One link that I have used is of drug trafficking. In the play of one adventure, I introduced the notion that illegal drugs were being shipped into Esgaroth. You then get another adventure, which was originally written as a murder involving a love triangle, and modify it slightly to be that it was actually related to the drugs trade. You can then link in further adventures as the need arises.

If you throw enough threads out there, eventually the players may pick one up and run with it, which makes your job as a GM easier in getting them from one adventure to another.

Fourth Step – Friends & Foes
The last step involves the common people who may interact with the players on a regular basis, across adventures. For this, you don’t need a comprehensive listing, as it is difficult to know beforehand what the players will do, but being able to provide some details when requested about the important regional players will make the region seem to be more than disconnected adventures. Given that I was using the ICE regional modules, much of this was already done in terms of the community leaders and important people, but I developed some additional lists that I felt were required. These were: -
* The Law. Obviously there if the adventures break the law, but also if they are needed to assist the adventurers. For this, I had four towns sufficiently large within the region to have their own Town Guard, and then a number of smaller communities with a Steallere (Constable) and possibly one or two deputies.
* Merchants & Traders – normally only those who either would hire the adventurers, or whom the adventures would contract to move goods. Given that Esgaroth is a major trading hub, trade could certainly become part of the player’s interests. For this, I assumed that most routes would be dominated by at most one to two traders for the route – competition doesn’t really work here. A brief list of the major traders and there setups and routes was made.
* Mercenary Companies – if the players need help, then they need to know who they can call. Six companies of varying strengths and dispositions are located in the region, and they were briefly detailed.
* Goblin Tribes. In order to provide some enemies, I decided to use goblins as the main mass enemies – orcs are too regimented and tough for simple adventurers. As such, I usedthe three tribes from the ICE modules, and came up with another three of my own, and treated the tribe like a person, giving them their own personality, locations and details so that the tribes would be distinct opponents.
In Conclusion
The important thing to note in all of this, is that your plans will generally not survive the first onslaught of the players, so I wouldn’t stress over the finer details too much. You will constantly have to rewrite and adjust as a swathe is cut through your carefully planned scenarios. Players will generally never do what you expect them to do, so as long as you have a good idea in your head as to how it all hangs together, and can show that you are in control, the players won’t mind if occasionally you have to tell them that you will need to provide them with the details they seek the next session.

GURPS Magic for Middle Earth

by Michael Cole

Principles of Magic in Middle Earth

When the world was sung into existence, magic came with it. Magic is thus an intrinsic part of the world, part of its creation. As magic is used, the magic fades. The world will eventually become mundane, as all the magic fades away, but it does still exist.Magic is also natural. It can enhance or weaken the inherent properties of things, but effects which are truly unnatural are limited.

Usage of magic is dependent on the abilities of the practitioner. Magic will enhance or provide magical effects for a skill implemented by someone, but will not allow that person to cause an effect for which they do not have the skill. In other words, if you cannot smith a weapon, you cannot enchant such a weapon. The enchantment occurs as a result of the smithing process, and the smith must have the required skill to manipulate the magic into the weapon’s creation. You cannot enchant a weapon after the creation. It enhances mundane tasks; it cannot take the place of them.

Magic cannot come out of nothing. You can cause a flammable object to start burning, but you cannot cause a fire with nothing to burn.
Magic takes time. Nothing is instantaneous. The mundane task still needs to be performed.
Magic use takes effort, as in an extra effort on top of the effort to perform the mundane task.
Magic effect is dependent on the individual power of the practitioner. Hedge mages cannot misfire and cause the Sun to disappear.
Magic by itself is neither good nor evil. It just is. It can however be used for good or evil purposes. If it is used for great good or evil, then it can become tainted. Magic can thus then affect further users. If a magic user utilises magic in an area where the magic is tainted, then he himself may become tainted. In other words, trying to use magic from an area in which magic was previously used to perform great evil may cause the user to start a slide towards evil.
Magic use is detectable. It causes a “disturbance in the force.” As to who can detect it and at what distance, that is dependent on the sensitivity of the detector and the scale of the usage. Magic that is tainted is easier to detect.
Magic usage is sometimes uncertain. It is not a science.

Practice of Magic

All of this is generic in nature – magic will be judged on a case-by-case basis.

Power
As per rules, people may buy levels of Magery, which affects spell effects. Elves start with Magery 1 by default (15 points). Hedge Magic (20 points) includes one level of Magery. Additional levels may be bought for 10 points each.

Skill Rolls .
All magic usage is based off mundane skills or abilities, and uses the mundane ability as the base roll. The magical effect is utilised by the spending of fatigue.

Contested and Uncontested
Magic use may either be contested or uncontested. Contested will be either against the opponent’s skill or will roll depending on the spell – Magery adds to level. If a spell is contested, then failure by more than five will generally cause some sort of blow-back effect on the caster – the effect determined by the spell.

Effort
All magic involves the use of extra effort – one point of fatigue is exerted for each usage, unless the magic usage involves a contest of skill and the contest is won by more than ten, in which case there will be no loss. Note that you cannot convert spend your own health to get extra fatigue.

Extra effort on top of that may be used. This will cost three extra fatigue and reduce the skill roll by one, but will increase the effect if it succeeds – the exact effect will depend on the spell but will generally be along the lines of one level of Magery or another dice in effect.

Magical Sensitivity
Those who have magical ability may be sensitive to magical usage. The detection ability will depend on the magical impact and the range. Base roll will be at an 11 plus Magery for a passive roll, +5 for an active attempt (which will cost fatigue). Range negatives will be as per the ranged weapons table. Solid cover will also add negatives.

New Advantages/Disadvantages
Acute/Dulled Magical Sensitivity ±2 points/level
Adds or subtracts from magical sense rolls. Note that Dulled Sensitivity may only be taken for those with Magery advantage, and Alertness does include this (as per Acute Vision etc.)

Aspected Magical Residue
Due to previous magical use or even just past events in an area, a region may develop a magical aspect. Possible aspects are: -
· Good
· Evil
· Divine
· Wild (Fae)

These aspects may give bonuses or negatives to power for specific types of spells or magical traditions cast in that region. Magic used in such regions may (GM’s discretion) cause some of that aspect to affect the caster.

Defined Spells
Spells that are prescribed. An example
Rebuke Disobedient Feä
This spell is used to rebuke a feä that has ignored a lawful summons to exit through the Doors of the Night. It can thus only affect human (or hobbit) spirits of the dead. The spell is based off an Intimidate skill roll +3 and is contested against the feä’s will. Normal success or failure will be as per the skill. Success by more than 5 or failure by more than -5 will cause stunning (as per surprise in combat) and 1d6 fatigue damage per level of Magery of the contest winner.

Undefined Spells
Any magical effect may be attempted with an appropriate skill roll. How it works will be decided on a case by case basis in discussion with the GM.

Magical Traditions in the Long Lake Region

Hedge Wizardry
Normally concerned with potions, amulets, charms and banes. Wild Aspected magic. Most well-known hedge mage in the area is Milo, who has been pointed out to you, and lives on the edge of the fae woods.

Alchemists
Not well known in this area, although some are known in Gondor.

Ascetics
The closest thing in this area to divine casters. Normally live an isolated life. Known for insight and foresight.

Runemasters
Estarave Windlords

Spells - Process

There are three types of magic - Formulaic, Spontaneous, and Ritual. Formulaic Spells are what you know the specific words for, and only do one specific thing. They can also have an inbuilt bonus to the spell casting (the power of the words). Spontaneous is you making things up as you go. Ritual is large scale stuff which will be detailed later.

To cast Formulaic Spells, you need at least level zero in Magery, which is 15 points. To work Spontaneous magic, you need the Hedge Magic advantage, which is 20 points and includes Magery 0. Each additional level of Magery is an additional 10 points.

All spells are based on an attribute or skill – there are no separate Magic Spells skills. Magic modifies other abilities or skills, and if you don’t have the base skill, you cannot magically modify it.

All magic involves the use of extra effort – one point of fatigue is exerted for each usage, unless the magic usage involves a contest of skill and the contest is won by more than ten, in which case there will be no loss. Note that you cannot convert spend your own health to get extra fatigue.

Extra effort on top of that may be used. This will cost three extra fatigue and reduce the skill roll by one, but will increase the effect if it succeeds – the exact effect will depend on the spell but will generally be along the lines of one level of Magery or another dice in effect.

To cast a spell, you: -
1. Mark off a point of fatigue
2. Make a roll against the base skill or attribute plus or minus any modifiers. If you make this roll, you have performed the mundane task.
3. You now establish whether there are additional magical effects. Take what you rolled, subtract 4, and add
a. Your level of Magery
b. If a Formulaic Spell, then the “Power of the Words”
c. Any plusses or minuses for the Aspected Magical Residue – see previous
4. If this also makes it, then you have caused a magical effect as well as the mundane effect.
5. If the spell can be opposed (if it is cast on something), then the subject is entitled to a saving roll. Note that even inanimate objects may gain saving rolls depending on the effect. The defence roll would normally be an attribute modified by strong or weak will and their own levels of Magery, or a skill. Note that only one roll is allowed to avoid both mundane and magical effects, but the number needed may differ. For example, for a poison with a magical overload – the save could be against Health for the poison and Health with Strong or Weak Will for the additional magical effect.
a. If you win the opposed contest by more than 10, you get your point of fatigue back.
b. Some Formulaic Spells may have additional effects for succeeding by more than a certain number.
c. If you lose by more than 5, and the opposition is animate, has levels of Magery, and actively opposes the spell, you may suffer additional effects as per above, and will at the very least lose 1-3 additional points of fatigue.

What Magic Cannot Do

· Affect something prescribed by the Will of Eru
· Alter “True Nature”. You cannot alter the fundamental essence of someone. E.g., if they were blind from birth, you cannot give sight. You can blind, or restore sight to one who was blinded after birth. Fire will always burn stuff. Predatory creatures will still hunt for food. Etc.
· Create “True” life (aside from Aulë, and he was severely spanked by Eru for doing it.) Homunculi or shades are fine. You can also modify life so long as you do not alter their fundamental “True Nature”. I get to judge this.
· Penetrate past the Doors of the Night. Those who have truly passed from this world cannot return. Also, you cannot alter the destination of someone else’s feä or soul – that can only be decided between themselves and Eru.
· Directly cause permanent changes to nature. Magic will fade, and thus effects will also. If you change someone into a stone pillar, then they are still in there. Eventually, the magic will fade, and they may become whole again, if they haven’t gone mad from the experience. Note if whilst they are a stone pillar, you start attacking them with a sledge hammer, then when the magic fades, it may suddenly leave a very battered corpse.
· Restore fatigue that was caused by magic usage.
· Affect distant or unseen targets without some sort of magical connection to the target.
· Allow you to be invulnerable to magic.
· Be contrary to Newton’s Laws (even though Newton doesn’t exist). Magic comes from somewhere, and magic is dissipated in the casting of spells. It cannot be perpetual.
· Provide perfect senses. The strongest Invisibility spell will always beat the strongest Detect Invisibility spell.
· Affect the past. The past may be viewed but not changed. Only the present can be changed.

When the call went out for someone to “put finger to keyboard and put together a few (or several) pages on which D&D worlds they know, love, and hate” I thought “Aha! Mystara! Planescape! I know those like the back of my DM screen”. There were questions I had to answer first in keeping with the different worlds theme that RPG Review announced, though: “Why do I love those settings so much? What do they have in common that makes them stand out?”

Simple, really: they're both big, open sandbox campaign settings.

Let me describe exactly what I mean when I say they are big, open sandbox settings. Arguably the term 'sandbox' is used more in regards to digital games, but it applies to good old-fashioned tabletop RPGs as well. The 'sandbox' simply represents the extents of the game world, and all of what lies therein. Such a setting:

has a lot of room to move about and explore
features few artificial barriers to exploration
is non-linear, and includes multiple possible paths forward
allows PCs some ability to shape or influence the campaign
may even have more than one story arc
has rich, complex, and deeply developed background

So here I will talk about all of the pros and cons of larges sandbox campaigns, these two systems as large sandbox campaign settings, and what I perceive as their strongest and most engaging characteristics. At this point in my gaming career I consider open sandbox campaigns to be my specialty.

Pros and Cons of a Large Sandbox Campaign

I can't claim that large sandbox campaigns are better compared to the more narrowly-defined, linear 'railroad' type of campaign. They both have their uses, and both can be disastrous if done poorly and amazing if done well. I would even say that there are some situations, like con games, where a very linear railroad campaign is necessary. Generally speaking, though, as a player and as a GM, I prefer large sandbox campaigns.

One advantage of a big sandbox campaign is the wealth of possibilities. All campaign settings have a lot of possibilities, of course, but not all settings are created equal. Consider TSR's Ravenloft setting, for example, compared to Spelljammer: the former takes place in a large (but finite) demiplane of no escape, while the latter is basically a fantasy version of Star Trek. For various reasons, I feel that Mystara and Planescape are tops when it comes to a wealth of possibilities- as I will explain in a bit.

Having a wealth of possible story arcs, places, persona, threats, challenges, and adventure ideas implies a second strength of large sandboxes: they require a rich, well-developed background. If I have learned anything from my decades as a GM, it is to never half-ass the trivial- because the players will ask about it. That also applies to major subjects such as history, culture, society, religions, etc. To make a big sandbox campaign work, then, you have to have a well-developed world.

That well-developed world translates to the third advantage of a large sandbox campaign: the ability for players to get involved with, stay engaged with, and even shape the world they are in. In every Planescape campaign I have ever GMed, I knew the campaign would continue indefinitely the moment at least two PCs got involved with at least two of that campaign's factions. After that, it was easy to put one possible adventure after another in front of the party, and see which direction they went. This often created some unexpected results, such as a minor throwaway NPC shopkeeper becoming an important NPC contact, and one player character becoming leader of a new faction of her own design! After awhile, the wealth of possible paths becomes self-sustaining in an open sandbox, especially if the GM is good at making those possibilities sound enticing.

Finally, this adventuring party autonomy makes a big, open sandbox feel more dynamic. One PC steals the body of a hated enemy to make sure he cannot ever be resurrected, and incurs the wrath of not only that enemy's faction, but also another faction that is responsible for collecting the city's dead. In Mystara, the party became so well-known and feared by the area goblinoid populations that sparing a tribe of hobgoblins at one point led that same tribe to offer themselves to the PCs barony as vassals out of sheer gratitude later on. In turn, that led several other tribes in a long and bloody attempt to overrun the barony to teach the turncoat tribe and the despicable PCs a lesson. Again, when the setting feels dynamic and exciting, especially due to the actions of the PCs, it is more interesting and is more likely to keep the players engaged.

One disadvantage of a big sandbox campaign is also the wealth of possibilities. A big, open sandbox campaign can make it very difficult for the GM to decide where to start, or what possible paths of many to present to the players. It can also make it difficult to create a single story arc throughout the campaign with so much going on, since at least some of the paths the PCs may follow should be relevant to the main story.

Even if the PCs have multiple paths to becoming involved in the main story arc, there is no guarantee that they will take any of them- or that they will remain on any one path. Another major disadvantage to big sandboxes is that along with PC autonomy comes the necessity of doing a lot of cat-wrangling. This not only applies to story arcs, but also to party cohesion: what happens if half of the party wants to pursue one path, but the other half wants to do something entirely different? That isn't generally a concern with a railroad-type campaign, but it is a constant headache in an open sandbox.

As I mentioned above, after a point a well-done open sandbox campaign is self-sustaining; the players don't necessarily want or need to rely on the GM to lay out the proverbial trail of breadcrumbs through the forest. However, unless the players are already familiar with the setting, they can only act on what the GM tells them about. Open sandboxes require a lot of extra effort from the GM up front. To make the most of the open concept, the GM has to not only present multiple possibilities to the players, but also to do so in a way that appeals to them as players and as their characters. And to effectively do this, the GM must be able to keep a metric buttload of people, places, relationships, causes, and effects straight and be able to explain them to the players as needed. It can be quite overwhelming, especially over time.

Formally first published in 1980 as the stand-alone Module X1: Isle of Dread, Mystara actually had its origins somewhat earlier with the 1975 publication of Dave Arneson's Blackmoor setting (Blackmoor was later placed within Mystara as a sort of prequel setting) (1). It rapidly expanded in scope and complexity through several boxed sets (including the OD&D Basic-Master Sets), a series of gazetteers and almanacs, and at least one monthly Dragon magazine serial. Its last TSR-published product was the Red Steel / Savage Coast campaign material in 1995-96 (2).

The first thing that comes to my mind when I think about Mystara, and one of the reasons I love that setting, is the amazing variety of nations, kingdoms, regions, cultures, and the history behind them all. Granted, most were directly inspired by real-world places and eras: the Thyatian Empire was a pretty unapologetic version of Imperial Rome, the Sind was obviously a fantasy version of pre-colonial India, and the Savage Coast area was a fantasy version of the New World colonies.

Other areas were obviously based on existing fantasy places: Alfheim bore more than a passing similarity to Middle Earth's Lothlorien, and there was a region actually called the Shire that was, big surprise, inhabited mostly by halflings. Even so, TSR somehow managed to do a great job of putting these varied different cultures and nation-states together on the same planet and then provide histories and backgrounds that tied them all together quite neatly. A series of Gazetteers (TSR GAZ1-15) and Poor Wizard's / Joshuan's Almanacs expanded on both the history, culture, and recent events of most of Mystara's Known World. What's up with that “Known World”, distinction, you ask? Well, I'm glad you did ask, because that brings up another example of how one campaign world ended up being amazingly complex.

Any Coincidences to the Real World, Past or Present, are Strictly Coincidental
Image: www.pandius.com[18]

The Known World: it isn't flat, but it is hollow. The moment I saw that on the then-new Hollow World boxed set in 1990, I had to have it- and the Sega Genesis game it inspired some time later. This boxed set made a complex setting rich in different places even more varied by adding other civilizations believed to be long gone on the surface: Nithians (read: ancient Egypt), Azcans (guess which real world culture inspired them), even the remnants of ancient Blackmoor, to name a few. Not only could PCs explore the surface of Mystara, but now they could explore its interior. And since the Hollow World was basically a giant preserve for Mystara's past, they could also 'go back in time' while doing so. Because the gods really didn't want the outside world meddling with their favorite but failed cultures, just getting to the Hollow World could be a mini-campaign. Not even a skyship could make it through the polar openings due to a pervasive anti-magic field...

As if dozens of past and present-day places weren't enough to keep PCs busy, enter the Champions of Mystara boxed set. Inspired by a long-running series of stories in Dragon magazine centered around the magnificent flying ship the Princess Ark, this expansion added a whole new way to explore Mystara: skyships. Similar to the vessels from the older but by then defunct Spelljammer setting, the Designer's Manual more importantly included rules on paying for, building, powering, and flying skyships. The set also included detailed information on the Sind, its archnemesis the Hulean Empire, the reprinted Princess Ark adventures from Dragon magazines 169-188 (not to mention deck plans for the Princess Ark herself), and some other examples of skyships. Armed with this boxed set, I was able to revitalize my active but stagnant campaign with new ideas and locales. The campaign became a naval campaign, with the PCs accepting a letter of marque from the Sind to prey on Hulean ships. The very generous share of the spoils offered to them as seasoned, well-known adventurers allowed them to design and build their very own skyship, which came in handy when the delicate peace between Thyatis and her archenemy the Alphatian Empire was broken in the War of the Immortals .

The Wrath of the Immortals boxed set (1992) wasn't the last Mystara publication TSR released, but to me it may have well been. My gaming group would soon break up due to half of us graduating high school and going off to different colleges. What better way to end a years-long campaign than with a war between the gods that would ultimately involve most of the places my gamers knew well already and change the face of both the Known World and the Hollow World? By now the group was well past 'name' level, with two older characters retired to baronial life as nobles (remember those hobgoblins?) and the remaining four players still running amuck as always, but with quite a reputation for derring-do across multiple kingdoms. Wrath of the Immortals allowed me to end the campaign in a big way and intimately involve the PCs in those epic events- and it would not be the last time I would use a world-changing resource to do that. I also see it as TSR's last hurrah for Mystara; along with the almanacs which released annually afterwards for a few years, it gave players who knew and loved Mystara a bit of the future to think about. It was, in a way, a partial reset of the campaign setting.

“Bryre Galvan? Now that was one top-shelf cutter right there. Yeah, she was a Prime- th' meanest Prime I ever saw. Th' Hardheads an' Sinkers didn't even like to cross her path. What? Nah, wouldn't say she had a temper, she was cold as Stygia. But she wouldn't suffer any fools, either. If she said pike it, you'd better shut yer bone-box, or she'd shut it for ya!”

What sounds like a poor attempt at speaking Nadsat is actually a prime example of why Planescape was so engaging: it had its own slang. A cutter was someone you didn't want to mess with. To 'pike it' meant to shut up. The Hardheads and the Sinkers were just two of the many factions constantly locked in a Machiavellian power struggle for control of the center of the multiverse. To rattle your bone-box was to talk incessantly and annoyingly. You have to love any campaign setting that includes its own street slang (not to mention a very unique art style).

Planescape (published between 1994 and 1998, including at least one PC game) was in many ways a whole new campaign setting, with DNA borrowed from the old Manual of the Planes (4). It centered (quite literally) on Sigil, the City of Doors, the crossroads of all the multiverse. From here one could travel to any Outer Planes, any Inner Plane, the Astral or Ethereal, or the Prime Material Plane- if one knew the right door to use and the trigger to turn it into a magical portal. Talk about a large sandbox- Planscape was the biggest sandbox ever! Sigil itself sat at the middle of the Outlands, an infinitely large (as far as anyone knew) neutrally-aligned plane which touched all the other Outer Planes via gate-towns. These gate-towns, with names like Glorium, Bedlam, and Excelsior, were so influenced by the plane they led to that they would occasionally slide right off into that plane.

Planescape was possibly the only campaign setting ever to be both so cohesive, so coherent, and so utterly weird at the same time. Quietly warring factions, which were part philosophy, part secret society, part cult (and some even had official duties in Sigil). The ability to theoretically turn any door, window, arch, or other opening into a portal to another plane. Cosmological 'rules' which governed the multiverse regardless of alignment or locale. The idea of a neutral city in a neutral plane where a yugoloth and a guardinal could walk down the same street and not try to destroy each other. The idea of a setting where the yugoloth and the guardinal might possibly have to work together at some point. A guardian of the city as powerful as any god, but utterly enigmatic and without worshipers or even servants and retainers. Sigil even had its very own species of wickedly pervasive, thorny weed. It was weird. It was wonderful. It was like a genius mix of L. Frank Baum, Robert E. Howard, Glen Cook, and Lord Dunsany- and I loved it.

One of the first adventures I picked up for my Planescape campaign was the Great Modron March. How much weirder can you get than highly lawful, absolutely neutral part-clockwork-and-part-organic creatures that, for reasons unknown, take a grand tour of the Outlands every few centuries? And when they suddenly deviate from that normal routine, can you blame the whole Multiverse for freaking out about it?

Planescape definitely has the well-developed setting down, but to me where it excels above all other settings is how much PCs can influence things. In a way, the whole setting is about individual actions shifting the balance of power between factions, between alignments, even between factions of the factions. Why is it important that PCs go to a certain place in a certain layer of the Nine Hells at a certain time and plant a rose? They may not be told why, but you can bet it is important to someone, somehow. One act of evil may be enough to push a gate-town into the Abyss- and one act of law might be enough to keep another gate-town from sliding into Limbo. As you can imagine, there is no end to beings who might want one or the other, for any number of reasons. Planescape may be the only setting that had adventures that were specifically designed for the PCs to change the setting: the Factol's Manifesto, containing the deepest, darkest secrets of every faction leader in Sigil comes to mind. Armed with that, a GM could unravel, change, or destroy any amount of Planescape canon. That sourcebook alone could make or break a PC, depending on what they learned from it and what they did with that information.

Just like with Mystara, when the delicate truce between factions breaks, very fundamental things can change. The last adventure released for Planescape- Faction War- profoundly changed the City of Doors and at the same time gave PCs a chance to become arguably the most important cutters in the city (even if few would know why). Although I didn't always use Faction War to end my Planescape campaigns, when I did the outcome was remarkable: one PC became leader of the Cipher faction and the next day, when the Lady of Pain uttered her final decree regarding the factions, disbanded it. Meanwhile, another PC became leader of the Taker faction and moved them to a new stronghold in the Outlands, outside of the Lady of Pain's influence. In no other campaign was it so easy for the PCs to change the printed canon of the setting without GM contrivance, but rather because something they did caused so many ripples.

Open Sandbox or Not?

I've certainly heaped praise on the big, open sandbox style campaign. I've certainly waxed very nostalgic about my two favorite campaign settings. I do neither at the expense of more linear type campaigns; as before, they both have their place, and the truth is some of that depends on the gaming group. I've played in groups that did not do well in open settings, and I have played in groups that disliked having their hands tied by a linear story arc. I would like to suggest that any campaign can benefit from some of the things I like about Mystara and Planescape. An engaging and well-developed background, a sense of dynamic change and cause/effect, and even a little flexibility for PCs to go off chasing butterflies once in awhile can add spice to any campaign setting and structure.

Dungeons & Dragons Forgotten Realms Review

by Dex Tefler

The Forgotten Realms are arguably the most popular of all the Dungeons and Dragons settings, often confused with being the base world for the game as a whole. The continent of Faerûn, part of the fictional world of Abeir-Toril, is the basis for most of the major adventures. Originally developed by Ed Greenwood for his private campaign, he began to contribute heavily to The Dragon magazine in 1979 with articles outlining adventures, locations and artifacts from his world. He sold the rights to TSR in 1986, and the following year, the first Forgotten Realms materials were published. Over the next several years, many existing TSR modules were retooled and re-issued as part of the Forgotten Realms. A series of novels were also launched, introducing arguably the best known character, the Drow Ranger/Fighter Drizzt Do'Urden.

The popularity of the Forgotten Realms setting has spawned over 200 novels and anthologies, a comic line in the 1980s lasting 25 issues, and 40 video games. Starting with Pool of Radiance, most of the highly successful D&D branded video games are set in the Forgotten Realms, including Curse of the Azure Bonds, Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale and Neverwinter Nights.

SETTING
“Life has no meaning but what we give it. I wish a few more of ye would give it a little.”
– Elminister

The main setting of Forgotten Realms is the continent of Faerûn; a diverse collection of kingdoms and freelands, often embroiled in small wars and intrigues as various forces struggle for control. The continent features a wide range of kingdoms, political systems and environments, which allows for varied campaigns and modules. The central starting place for most Forgotten Realms campaigns is the great city of Waterdeep. Waterdeep is a powerful city-state, ruled by secret lords, set on the Sword Coast. The city is connected to both the pirate city of Skullport and the Undermountain, which leads to the Drow controlled Underdark.

Faerûn`s scope offered a variety of game styles and settings, moving away from the dungeon crawling motif or the high fantasy of D&D`s other two primary game worlds. Parties roamed from land to land, each character with potentially different motives, advantages and interests to guide them. The detailed pantheon of gods added an additional dimension, as characters could find themselves in the midst of religious wars and struggles for followers and power. The sprawling setting allowed for a wide diversity of plots and travel, as players followed different trails which led from secret temples to lost cities in the scorching wastes to battling pirates on the high seas.

Popular nations include Zhentil Keep, a fortress controlled by the church Bane, god of fear; Cormyr, the besieged human kingdom that contained the ruins of the great Elf city of Myth Drannor; Amn, the rapidly expanding and ambition merchant and trade nation; Thay, a mountainous slave nation controlled by evil Red Wizards; and the Dalelands, home of Elminister and an implacable foe of Zhentil Keep.

HISTORY

“If you care to listen, I can give you a small preview of what I'm going to say about those people who have the glory of adventuring with you”
- Volothamp Geddarm

When the Forgotten Realms was released, it quickly became one of the most popular D&D titles, to the point that it was often considered the default D&D setting with players. As the world evolved, properties like Kara-Tur were redeveloped to take place in the Forgotten Realms. As TSR began to develop their 2nd edition of AD&D, the opportunity was taken to revamp Forgotten Realms in order to clear up earlier inconsistencies and establish a more consistent and cohesive setting. ‘The Time of Troubles’ was a major event that spanned books, modules and the comic series, where, as punishment for their endless plotting, the Lord Ao forced the pantheon of gods to take mortal form, spreading them across the land. The events created wildly unpredictable magical effects, and over the span of the Troubles, many gods were killed or imprisoned and several were replaced by humans, now raised to the divine. The changes were designed to reflect new rules in second edition and eliminate a number of no longer supported classes like the Assassin.

Forgotten Realms would also become the basis for the RPGA’s Living City campaign, set in the city of Raven’s Bluff. The campaign, which ran from 1987 to 2004, was highly successful and often formed the backbone of role-playing conventions. Further materials expanded out the Forgotten Realms world, including the Underdark and the Drow culture, heavily popularized through R.A Salvatore’s best selling series. Bioware’s hugely successful Baldur’s Gate series renewed focus on the Sword Coast and later Icewind Dale, supported by additional materials.

Further changes took place with the release of the Third Edition Forgotten Realms campaign setting in 2001. More detailed descriptions were made to update the various nations and to advance the post-Time of Troubles setting decades following the event. A wide range of additional modules expanded areas like the desert lands of Anauroch, Shadowdale and unrest in Cormyr. It would eventually lead to the Spellplague event set to coincide with the release of the Fourth Edition players and DM guides, in which massive magical upheaval reshaped the land itself, destroying several nations entirely, removing gods, and creating areas of magical instability or desolation.

GAMING EXPERIENCE

“Jump on my sword while you can, evil... I won't be as gentle!” – Minsc
Forgotten Realms’ allure is that it tries to find a line between the elements of dark and high fantasy common in other lines like Greyhawk and Dragonlance. The characters and NPCs are typically flawed figures, who are rarely black and white in their motives and actions. The inclusion of Elminister as a Gandalf-esque plot device means that in many cases, the player group is often a collection of opportunistic adventures in search of treasure who end up thrust into an unlikely role as heroes. The campaign setting lends itself strongly to a mixture of adventures, from dungeon crawling to exploring ancient cities to campaigning against invaders or bringing down evil wizards. The setting relies more on mortal antagonists having the most impact on the wider world, while monsters are more of an atmospheric threat, dragons excluded.

Because of the flexibility, good DMs can experiment with settings, basing campaigns set mostly within the walls of a big city like Waterdeep, locked in as part of the local political intrigue, or campaigns that take characters to the far ends of Toril, engaging in epic adventures and fighting evil. The variety of nations also offers itself well to parties with mixed races, as few areas are solely dominated by one race or another. That flexibility can occasionally work against less experienced players, finding themselves lost in the possibilities and the opportunities the world provides.

Another advantage are the easily recognizable characters from many of their popular properties like video games and novels, which offer quick ways to encourage players on the right track in an adventure through brief interactions. Forgotten Realms tends to be conservative with the power of magic and magical artifacts, which helps keep certain classes from quickly outstripping the rest in usefulness.

Dungeons & Dragons Ravenloft Review

by Dex Tefler

The Demiplane of Dread, or Ravenloft, is one of the most unique Dungeons and Dragons lines. Billed as a Gothic Horror roleplaying setting, Ravenloft is one of the few AD&D settings which focuses more on atmospheric roleplaying and less tangible rewards and goals for a gaming party. Often sheer survival outstrips treasure or glory as the best outcome from an adventure. The first glimpse of Ravenloft was a standalone module published in 1983 which introduced Lord Strahd Von Zarovich, master of Castle Ravenloft, after which the module was named. Written by acclaimed fantasy authors Tracy and Laura Hickman, it was one of the most praised modules for
a number of years, spawning a sequel prior to the release of the full setting in 1990.

Ravenloft’s release established it as a fully realized gameworld, designed to compete with the rising popularity of other horror based systems like Call of Cthulhu or White Wolf’s World of Darkness. The timing proved fortuitous, as it coincided with Hollywood’s renewed interest in gothic horror like the release of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Ravenloft also drew a surprising high caliber of existing and up and coming dark fantasy writers for the 24 official novels, sporting such names as Tanya Huff, Laurell K. Hamilton, Christie Golden and P. N. Elrod. Ravenloft was also the setting for three popular first person video games in the mid-nineties which won modest acclaim.

SETTING

"My tormenters will never let me free. I know that now. But when I understand this mystery, I will teach my tormentors that they are not the masters of my fate."
- Azalin

The setting for Ravenloft is known as ‘The Demiplane of Dread’; a bizarre collection of lands surrounded by voluminous mists, occasionally dotted by ‘islands’ in the mists. The lands are wildly different in climate, nature and denizens, with only a few commonalities like the great Musarde River providing any consistency. The chaotic nature of the realm is based on the whims of the Dark Powers; a formless and mysterious force which created the demiplane. Acting through the mists themselves, the Dark Powers are capable of stealing people, lands and whole populations from
other realms and recreating them in Ravenloft. Each of the realms has a Dark Lord, usually a supernatural creature of great power, who is the ultimate power in their land. However, the realms are also prisons, which trap the Dark Lord in their borders and torment them with their greatest desires being held just slightly but constantly beyond their grasp.
The duality of the gameworld is one of the most intriguing aspects of Ravenloft. Are the Dark Powers actually a sort of judgement from the light or is it that tormenting evil is more satisfying than good? DMs are encouraged to approach the motives from different angles, which means that the slant of each game is always slightly different. The game features a clan of Gypsy analogues called the Vistani, who are the only people who can safely navigate the mists at the borders of the realm and see the future through their Tarroka decks.

The realms are a combination of reflections of lands from other D&D settings and original ones based on major works in gothic horror. Several major villains from other settings appear as Dark Lords in the original setting, such as Lord Soth from Dragonlance and Vecna from Greyhawk. Others include analogous figures like Dr. Mordenheim and his monster Adam, Lord Wilfred Godefry the ghost, Anhktepot the mummy and Azalin the Lich King.

HISTORY

"Evil natures are never without good teachers."
- Publilius Syrus

The original release of Ravenloft was a boxed set called ‘the black box’ which outlined the lands, the lords and the modifications to magic, spells and classes which were caused by the Dark Powers. A large number of modules were developed for the setting, usually to show off the unique evil and curse in each realm and their master. However, through the books and the modules, a larger story came into focus regarding Azalin and Strahd at its core. Azalin originally was pulled into the mists with his transformation into a lich and he ended up serving Strahd for several years
as the vampire sought to break the hold of the Dark Powers over him. Eventually, Azalin would leave Strahd’s land of Barovia and stepped into the mists as the new land of Darkon was made for him. For decades, the Lich continued his research until he was able to force a prophesied event – The Grand Conjunction – which freed the Dark Lords from their lands temporarily and wrecked havoc on the realm. Many lands disappeared or were absorbed into other lands, and several Dark Lords were killed or replaced.

In 1994, TSR released the second version of Ravenloft called ‘the red box’ which updated the realm with all the changes. The setting was further supported by a series of guides written by the factious Doctor Von Richten (Ravenloft’s own Van Helsing) who detailed creatures of darkness, the Vistani and other denizens of the night. A second attempt by Azalin to escape in 1997 resulted in a third wave of small changes, called ‘The Grim Harvest’, mostly used to update various personalities and schemes and to introduce a new range of villains and adventure
possibilities.

In 2000, WotC licensed Ravenloft to Arthaus Games and published under White Wolf’s Sword and Sorcery imprint. The new incarnation lost the lands and Dark Lords with ties to other D&D settings and overhauled the rules to reflect the d20 gaming system. While several books were published to support the line, it sold poorly and WW allowed the rights to revert to WotC. Since then, while numerous announcements have been made regarding a new release for Ravenloft materials and novels, so far no additional materials have been published.

GAMING EXPERIENCE

"I see I underestimated you, Strahd. It is a common mistake."
- Azalin

As mentioned, Ravenloft is far more devoted to an atmospheric game experience than other D&D settings. The players are almost always outmatched by their opponents and find themselves used as pawns in larger games of intrigue played against other Dark Lords. It relies on misdirection, unknown threats and the constant feeling of dread, which can pose a challenge to inexperienced DMs. Another aspect of the setting is that the players are always under the constant threat of being corrupted by the Dark Powers themselves. Many standard spells are altered or increase the risk of being twisted and causing permanent damage. Paladins, Druids and Clerics are especially vulnerable to corruption, as their links to their gods are muted and good aligned characters find themselves more at risk from random attacks. Much like Call of
Cthulhu, the longer a character plays in Ravenloft, the more likely they will eventually fall to evil or madness.

Perhaps the biggest challenge is setting long running campaigns in Ravenloft, as the actions of the heroes will time and time again fail to do much to change the evil nature of the realm. They must content themselves with smaller victories and helping individuals and tiny groups as opposed to whole towns or cities. Magic items are rare compared to other settings and can come with substantial negatives.

Despite those challenges, Ravenloft offers one of the most varied settings for players. Several realms offer the chance to set adventures in the industrial age, with gunpower weapons and steam engines. There are realms of humid swamps and jungles, frigid lands locked in ice and ominous mountain ranges. The realm of Paridon is a massive industrial city which sets atop miles of dangerous sewers. So players can play a range of types, from traditional D&D groups of fighters, mages and clerics to more nuanced teams of monster hunters, investigators and inventors. The less traditional DMs find numerous opportunities to mix different elements together in the game, using the atmosphere of dread to both challenge and entertain their players.

Masters of Duck and Leath

Plot Summary: A group of Gloranthan Ducks are hunting an ogre in the Upland Marsh. They find themselves transported to the Cumbrian Leath, where they encounter a young woman who has been struck unconscious. Helping her, she talks about a man-eating monster that is rumoured to live in the area. The talking ducks are taken to the family's homestead where they are (eventually) warmly welcomed. The family explains that a wicked knight, Sir Daffyd, with his men-at-arms and squires have been oppressing the local people and trapping them within their dungeons.

As the Ducks investigate the keep, it eventually becomes clear that the ogre is not the knight, but rather the family they stayed with. Whilst confronting accusations of being demons whilst at the same time needing to excuse themselves and convince the knight of the the real location of the ogre. If they manage all this the knight will organise a sortie with the ducks against the ogre's family. In the ruins of the ogre household a talisman that allows for transportation between mythic Earth and mythic Glorantha is discovered.

Scene 0. Character Introductions

0.1 Purpose of Masters of Duck and Leath

Masters of Duck and Leath is run to introduce people to HeroQuest, to Glorantha, and to Arthurian Britian using one of the species of Glorantha, the sapient ducks.

The title is a pun from "Masters of Luck and Death" the name of a the ritual in the Glorantha, which Pharaoh Belintar performs and uses for getting new physical bodies. This ritual occurs as a tournament. On a specific day, participants wake up in a magical realm, the victor of the tournament sacrifice his body to Pharaoh and becomes liberated as an angelic being.

Leath was one of the wards of the ancient county of Cumberland in north west England, roughly corresponding to contemporary Eden District.

This scenario was first run at Unicon in Melbourne, Australia on Friday October 4, 2013, and on Saturday October 5, and on Sunday the 6th at the Church of Gaming. This game can be run with other characters and strengths with appropriate modifications due to the flexibility of the HeroQuest system.

0.2 System and setting background

0.2.1 HeroQuest

HeroQuest is a narrativist role-playing game, arguably the original completely narrativist game. It has its roots in Greg Stafford's fantasy world of Glorantha, but is designed as a generic system. The game's mechanics have a quick resolution method by comparison the results of two twenty sided dice, each tied to a character ability chosen by players and/or narrator. After the die roll, the participants work together to interpret the outcome in story terms.

One die is rolled for the character's ability, the other for the resistance, either an ability of a another character or a resistance score of an impersonal obstacle or a force of nature.

Results rank from Fumble, through Failure and Success to Critical. A Success is scored if the die roll does not exceed the ability score, with a 1 indicating a Critical success. If the die roll exceeds the ability score, the result is a Failure, while a 20 indicates a Fumble (Critical Failure).

The two results are then compared to determine the level of victory (or defeat):

Once an ability surpasses 20, it gains a level of mastery, noted by a rune (W) and then drops down to 1. So instead of 21, the character would have a 1W. This cycle repeats, so after 20W you get 1W2, signifying two masteries. The system allows for easy scaling. In a contest, masteries cancel each other out.

Hero Points are awarded at the end of successful adventures. Hero Points can be used to improve ability levels, or can be held in reserve and used to bump contest results, as with Masteries. Masteries are applied automatically, Hero points are a decision of the player.

0.2.1.2 Glorantha

Glorantha is a fantasy world created by Greg Stafford which he "discovered" in 1966. It was first introduced in the board game White Bear and Red Moon (1975) by Chaosium, and thereafter in a number of other board, roleplaying, and computer games. These include RuneQuest (1st ed. 1978), Hero Wars (1st ed. 2000) and HeroQuest (1st ed. 2003, 2nd ed. 2009), as well as several works of fiction and the computer strategy game King of Dragon Pass.

In Glorantha, magic operates from the everyday level of prayers and charms to the creation and maintenance of the world. Heroes make their way in the world, and may also venture into metaphysical realms to gain knowledge and power, at the great risk. The world is flat, with a dome-like sky, and it has been shaped in large and small ways by the mythic actions of the gods.

Humans are the dominant species, but other sentient beings abound. Some, such as the mystic dragonewts, are unique to Glorantha. Nonhuman creatures typical in fantasy are present albiet with significant differences, such as elves (walking sapinet trees) and dwarves (robotised earth). Broos are creatures of chaos, with the ability mate with any species. Ducks are large intelligent ducks with arms instead of wings. They lack the ability to fly and number less than 10,000, mainly in an area called the Upland Marsh in Sartar, an area they share with undead. They are believed to the the result of a failed magical experiment.

Sartar has recently been overtaken and colonised by the Lunar Empire. The ducks supported the rebellion of the local storm-worshipping Sartarites which the ducks also follow, especially the Humakt Death-God (Hueymakt Death-Drake), or Urox (The Stormbill). After this the Lunar General Fazzur Wideread, called for a pogrom against Ducks. The Ducks fled from their only city, Duckpoint, deeper into the swamp especially to a fortified location called Lookout Isle.

0.2.1.3 Pendragon

Pendragon is a role-playing game in which players take the role of knights performing chivalric deeds in the tradition of Arthurian legend. In 1991, Pendragon (3rd edition) won the Origins Award for Best Roleplaying Rules of 1990. Actual rules for magic was not introduced until the 4th edition. There is a notable lineage in the game system and personality emphasis in Pendragon through to HeroQuest.

The default Pendragon setting is a combination of actual fifth- and sixth-century British history, high medieval technologies, fashions, and social norms (10th to 15th centuries), as according to Arthurian legend. The political forces are roughly those actually present in post-Roman Britain. Technology and many aspects of culture, however, progress in an accelerated fashion, such that King Arthur's Britain is as feudal with the features of the Arthurian romances projected backwards.

A Pendragon character has "Statistics" (Size, Dexterity, Strength, Constitution, and Appearance) and derived values, Skills, Personality Traits, and Passions. The latter two require some explanation, as they are atypical. The Personality Traits are thirteen opposed pairs that represent the character's personality (e.g.., Chaste / Lustful, Energetic / Lazy, Forgiving / Vengeful, Generous / Selfish, etc). Higher values in certain Personality Traits will grant bonuses either according to Chivalry, or Religion. Passions are non-paired traits (e.g., Loyalty to Lord, Love of Family etc). Passions may be invoked to provide a bonus on related actions. All tests on statistics, traits, skills, and passions are conducted with a d20 roll, which may be opposed (e.g., in combat).

A Pendragon character typically has a number of squires which assist them on their quest, and usually engage in a number of non-adventuring duties (such as management of the manor) during the Winter Phase. Pendragon campaigns move through the years quite quickly and it is not at all unusual for a game to cover two or three generations of characters.

0.2.1.4 Arthurian Legend

The Arthurian legend is on of the three classic "matters" as described by Jean Bodel, the other being the mythological themes taken from classical antiquity, the "Matter of Rome", the tales of the paladins of Charlemagne and their wars with the Moors and Saracens, which constituted the "Matter of France". Arthur's story is the chief subject of the "Matter of Britain".

The Arthurian literary cycle has two major interlocking stories. One concerns Camelot, usually envisioned as a doomed utopia of chivalric and Christian virtue, undone by the fatal flaws of the characters. The other concerns the quests of the various knights to achieve the Holy Grail. In addition the relationships between the characters established notions of courtly love, romance, and seduction.

At least twenty major authors (a number anonymous) contributed to the development of the Arthurian legend, mostly in the 12th and 13th century. This includes literary figures such as Chrétien de Troyes, Geoffrey Chaucer, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and Thomas Malory. A number of modern authors have also taken the legend in terms of personal development, heroism, and reinterpretation (e.g., T. H. White, Alfred Tennyson, Marion Zimmer Bradley).

0.3 Provide Specific background information for the Ducks of Anaheim

Anaheim is a village of some 200 Durulz between the semi-abandoned city of Duckpoint and the refugee colony at Lookout Isle in Upland Marsh, noted as a good source of giant snails (now herded), and tasty wild reeds which have been converted to farmlands. Built on a peat-hillock it is well-protected by a strong and high wooden and stone palisade and watch towers. Anaheim is an new village but it has been used as a wayfarers post for some time prior. It has previously considered to be a place of retreat due to the chaotic dangers of the Upland Marsh.

One of those chaotic dangers has been ogres, chaotic beasts in the form of humans which eat other sapient species, who are notoriously hard to discover and detect. As in other cases their presence is discovered by the evidence - in this case the gnawed remains of some young ducks who had travelled too far from the village.

Hue and cry has been raised on the night as the chieften's son, Peeking Waddle, has been abducted. Apparently the young duck had been pretending to be adventuring with some friends after curfew and outside the palisade when he was captured by a large strong human. With great speed, a small team of the best ducks has been assembled to travel into the swamp and find this fiendish ogre before it is too late!

0.4 Distribute Characters

Six standard ducks are provided, albeit of different professions and base abilities. Each player should add twenty ability levels (maximum of 10 in any one ability) and three flaws at 13 for their character.

Each character has 2 Hero Points which can be used during the adventure.

Scene 1. Ducks in the Marsh

The first scene involves the intrepid ducks searching in the swamp, in the dark, for the ogre and the chieftan's son. There are three stages to this task, finding the trail, finding Peeking's shortsword and other clues, and stepping beyond.

Finding the trail should begin with a standard resolution of 14, but with a -5 to abilites because of the Darkness. Each duck is allowed an attempt, and it can almost be assumed that one will find the trail. Failure will just lead to the characters having to search longer and at a lower requirement, as per the pass/fail cycle.

Success will lead the ducks deeper into the swamp, where the occasional marshy ground gives way to entirely shallow water with tall reeds. Continuing the search requires another search check, but now with a resolution number of 17, plus the modifier. Clever ducks will make use of their swim ability.

Success on this second station will lead the characters to discover a clutch of feathers, and Peeking's shortsword and belt. Characters who investigate the feathers will, after a successful check, realise that they are left-arm feathers and thath the belt has been unclipped rather than torn off, both suggesting that their removal was quite deliberate (Peeking is foolhardy, not entirely stupid).

Failure on the second station will lead the characters to be beset by a group of human zombies, equal in number to the player characters. Each zombie has an Sword or Spear ability of 13 (the main ability) and is augmented by their single-minded personality Eat Brains 13 (+3), plus Rotted Armour and Dodgy Equipment 6 (-1), and Watery Terrain 13 (-3). After defeating the zombies they may search again with a lower target number.

As the characters travel into the weeds the swamp becomes deeper and the the misty coverage becomes stronger. Eventually they will encounter another group of zombies (as above) but who suffer a -5 terrain modifier, but these will fight on as an extended simple contest.

Scene 2. Ducks in the Leath

Once they defeat the zombies and continue on their journey the player character ducks will find that the mist is gradually lifting and light is streaming in - this is not possible because it ought to be the early hours of the morning.

As the reeds part, the ducks find themselves in a most peculiar setting. Gone is the swamplands of Upland Marsh and instead they are on a river bank in a forest with a light sunshine and the sound of birds. As the player characters debate about their new surroundings environs (perhaps they have been transported to Apple Lane?), they will find hidden at the base of a tree and under some foliage an dishevelled and unconscious young woman, who has suffered a blow on the back of the head. A successful visual perception check will indicate that she wears a small silver cross (clearly a Humakti initiate!) on a necklace.

Applying healing skills (mock contest) will eventually bring the young woman around, who will be absolutely terrified by the duck-like monsters and will do her best to try to escape, but will stumble and fall due to her wounds etc. If and when it becomes obvious she will express surprise that she can talk to the ducks, who apparently speak Brittonic to her - the ducks of course are hearing Tradetalk. She will introduce herself as Lunete, daughter of Owain. She's a simple peasant girl, who is not too far from home. She had completed her morning chores and had taken a walk along the river where she likes to watch rabbits, where she was set upon by a man - she suspects a fellow of the dastardly Sir Daffyd, if not the knight himself. She suspects that the ducks must be some sort of faery creature brought to the land by the magic of King Arthur's rule.

(This is a complete lie of course. She and her father are both ogres and have manufactured the incident in hope of waylaying the ducks and softening up the knights so they have complete control of the region. They have discovered the secret portal between the two worlds and are familiar with both Tradetalk and Britonnic. The ogres both have the ability of Detection Disguise of 10W, protecting them from Sense Chaos, Truespeak, etc.)

Scene 3. Ducks in the Homestead

Meeting with Owain, father of Lunete. A big chopping man wood who initially reacts to the ducks as some sort of monster who have captured his daughter. Only when Lunete interposes herself between them and explains how the ducks are actually her rescuers. Owain is surprised, but not doubtful towards his daughter's word. Once satisfied the the ducks are good people, he will become friendly, even garrulous, with a big toothy smile.

The homestead is a single building of wattle and daub with a thatched roof. Some goats wandering about, some pigs in a pen. An old goat's skull has been charmingly nailed to one wall. Inside is a single room with including sty for the pigs, goats and chickens at the far end. There is a big bed and a plank of several pieces of wood on rocks masquerading as a table - probably an old door. A stew brews on the hearth, consisting pretty much of anything that's available and there is a barrell of an alcohol made up of vegetable scraps that weren't good enough to give to the pigs.

Over dinner Owain will explain how this region, once prosperous has become blighted. It was ruled by King Pellehan who fell into sin, and was stabbed in the thigh by Sir Balin, the Dolorous Stroke. King Pellehan has fallen into another world and is kept alive at his castle by the Holy Grail, where he has become the Fisher King, or the Maimed King. The land has since fallen into ruin - crops have failed, milk comes from the cows sour, eggs are rotten. His own wife and son died of a disease, leaving just his beloved daughter. The region used to have a small village, but that too is deserted. The old knight of the castle has died and his son is a cruel ruler. Owain mentions (in a pretty broad hint) that many villagers, especially the young, have been taken to the castle but have never returned. Clearly, if the chieftan's son is anywhere, it will be there (in reality, he's in a dungeon and larder under the hay, beneath the sty).

Presumably the ducks will want to investigate this keep, but they are Owain, clumsily, asks the ducks where they wish to sleep. Do they sleep on the river like 'regular ducks'? - he apologises for this phrase. He offers them his bed, he an his daughter will make up some straw and sleep on the floor. He will awken the ducks a couple of hours before dawn so they will be well rested before their dawn raid.

Scene 4. Ducks at the Keep

The actual "real world" location of the adventure is Kirkoswald on the River Eden; inventive Narrators can make use of the regional map of that area.

The Keep is described as being a short distance south along the river, overlooking the (almost) abandoned village. The journey is less than an hour, by country reckoning (actually two, if you're a duck). Arriving before dawn, the ducks will notice a boat on an abandoned jetty of the village. The village itself is a disaster. Half the buildings are completely collapsed and the handful of people who remain are quite mad, semi-starved, and impoverished.

One character who does not fit their criteria is a portly and middle-aged gent, Brother Seissyl, a kind friar, is (ironically) feeding ducks by the river. If the player ducks disturb him, he will react in complete terror, screaming something about demonic ducks from hell - however the player-characters will not be able to understand him.

The Keep is quite simple. On the roof is a Saxon spearman named Staniland, who has a mighty collection of such weapons. Inside the keep are two Briton men-at-arms, Ninian and Drust, who use two-handed long spears. The relevant total combat ability of all three characters is 5W, a combination of their weapon skills (16), their armour (13), strength (13) and their loyalty (13).

There is also Sir Daffyd who, as timing would have it, was preparing his armour for a ride against Irish pirates on the coastline. With his plate armour and his mighty two-handed sword, his ability is a mighty 10W (weapon skill 20, armour 20, mighty weapon 15, knighty disposition 15). He also has a horse 18, riding 18, and lance 18 - he's pretty tough.

On the ground floor is the main hall where the aforementioned Brother Seissyl and a grumpy Brother Morvydd work, and where everyone else sleeps.

A trapdoor leads from the roof to a second level which houses a chapel which looks vaguely like a Humakti temple, although it also has a Lunar-style crucifixion. Inside the chapel is a nun, Brangaine, who has a Issaries talisman that allows her to speak the languages of Glorantha. She insists that she received it from a walking, talking tree, but everyone else at the Keep think's she's quite mad. Brangaine, will inform the ducks to return to the Glorantha requires them to travel among the reeds on a misty, cloudly night when the moon cannot be seen. It is almost by accident that one will find the portal.

Almost inevitably there is an almighty battle before the player ducks encounter Sister Brangaine (the ogres do not know of her talisman) who hopefully can convince the fighting to end. There may be some seriously injured characters - Sister Brangaine has some churguiry ability.

Scene 5. Ducks on Trial

Reaching some level of parley, the Ducks and the Knight can converse through the sister's talisman. It will surprise the ducks to discover that the knight is most certainly not an ogre, and these are the first Gloranthan beings he has met. Brother Morvydd on the other hand, thinks that all fae creatures are the devil's handiwork, especially these monsters, and will test the ducks according to the Christian virtues of Pendragon (i.e.., Chaste, Forgiving, Merciful, Modest, Temperate). The ducks will have the opportunity to present one of their number to argue the case of why they have such a virtue. If they fail dismally, Morvydd will be able to convince the Knight that the Ducks are indeed the work of the devil and treat them accordingly. Otherwise, Sir Daffyd will come to the conclusion that the ducks are some sort of virtuous pagan and are therefore tolerable.

If the ducks mentioned their stay with Owain and Lunete, and explain the behaviour of ogres in Glorantha, Brother Seissyl will rush to the main hall to recover an old illuminated manuscript which describes the story of the village, including an image of two humans eating people - they have a remarkable resemblance to the Owain and Lunete. A flash of realisation comes across the ducks as they remember the toothy grin on Owain, and the Chaos symbol of the goat's head nailed on the door. Sir Daffyd mentions that although many villagers have left, some have gone missing as well and on at least one occasion, their gnawed remains discovered.

It would seem that they located their ogres!

Scene 6. Ducks and Knight Against the Ogres

Sir Daffyd will rode forth against the ogres with two of his men-at-arms, probably Ninian and Drust (assuming they are not too wounded). Clever ducks will make their way to the ogres' home at double speed by using the village boat. The ogres are engaged in preparations to make their own way down to the Keep for a mopping up operation - little do they know that the ducks and the knight have joined forces, a possibility that they did not consider.

Owain is a particularly tough character, with a total default combat ability of 10W2 - due to his size, strength, the mighty two-handed axe that he carries, and the charming chaotic feature he has, "skin like steel". Lunete, is not so fortunate, only having a total ability of 20, with a dagger, dexterity, and reflexes. Lunete is more resistant to mental or spiritual attacks than her father.

Assuming all goes well, the ogres will be defeated and Peeking Waddle will be recovered. The ducks can then wait until the appropriate time to make their way back to Glorantha.

Scene 7. Ducks Homecoming

Assuming this succeeds, the chieftan, Gawkip Pucewattle (character from Stewart Standfield's Duxplotation site) , is overjoyed at the return of his son (although privately he will be having some words with the boy) and calls for a great feast of fatted snails. He will ask the characters to explain at the feast their adventures in this strange place translated variously as "Dirt", "Ground" or "Earth" and how magic is so uncommon.

And everyone lives happily ever after.

Appendix: Characters

Flysouth Winter, Scouting Duck and Orlanth Initiate

Abilities:
Swim 13
Boating 13
Duck's Disease (small) 13
Run Surprisingly Well 13
Find Trail 13
Self Bow 13
Field Healing 13
Live Off The Land 13
Fly A Bit (magic from Orlanth) 13
See Like An Eagle (magic from Orlanth) 13

All proprietary material owned by Issaries, Inc., and all material incorporating or making derivative use of proprietary material owned by Issaries, Inc. is used only pursuant to the terms of a revokable license from Issaries, Inc.

The Epic of Roderick

by Luke Geissmann

Then the swamp did melt away and flow out like the river
Into a single strange and big land made of monster to make you quiver

But they ran in fear from the four four those who stood soon fell
In and in the sword did plunge, you could hear Humakti knell

Swift of foot we followed the tracks and soon we found their keep
From our hells, we thundrously quacked And them say "Oh bleep!"

On we charged against their wall through arrow, stone, and spear
Our grand hero was impaled yet he didn't slow or fear

The doors flew open, battered down by Roderick's blessed might
Many ogres lay in wait eager to join the fight

Heedless of fer, our hero plunged into the fierce melee
Bringing the creatures to their knee, and .. waited it rhymed with melee already

Anyway, the ogre defeated, our heroes won, the son healthy and hale
And so I thank you good friends, for hearing this duck's tale.

Werewolf The Apocalypse : The Yugoslav Wars

by Lev Lafayette

Background

Werewolf : The Yugoslav Wars is a game of Werewolf : The Apocalypse (1st and 2nd editions) set in the period of the Yugsolav Wars (c1991-1998), and more specifically the Bosnian War (1992-1995). It's a more designed around the real-world events of the Bosnian War with the supernatural overlay of the various White Wolf games (especially Vampire and Mage) and the mythologies of the region but without much of the Werewolf background as writ (e.g., the Pentex Corporation). There is, of course, a genuine concern about not making serious errors in misrepresentation of real-world cultures and events, especially in a work which combines fact with fiction. The emphasis should be, in this context, of providing at least some sense via fictional elements to what was very much a senseless conflict.

The starting date of the story-game is March 1991. All starting player characters are Bosniak werewolves. In character, you will be from Bosnia-Herzegovina, your first language will be Bosnian. This language pretty much the same as Serbo-Croation, except it has more loanwords from Turkish, Persian, and Arabic ("Orientalisms"). Latin is the most commonly used script, but Cyrillic is also used. Most, if not all, characters will be at least nominal Sunni Muslims but also with localised traditions especially the Slavic pagan worship of Jarilo (aka Juraj, Jarovit), the god of the seasons and lunar changes or Perun, the henotheistic thunder god of the Slavs.

Bosnia is located in the western Balkans, bordering Croatia to the north and westm Serbia to the east, and Montenegro. The name Bosnia-Herzegovina refers to the two historic regions, the former representing about eighty percent of the country, with the latter in the southern area. The country is very mountainous with the central Dinaric Alps throughout the land. Approximately fifty percent of the country is forested, somewhat unusual for the populated and technologically advanced Europe. Northern Bosnia contains very fertile agricultural land. The country has only 20 kilometres of coastline, with Croatia controlling the western coastline. The population of Bosnia is 4.4 million of which 44% are Bosnians, 31% are Serbs, and 17% are Croats; about 6% designated themselves as "Yugoslavs". The major cities are Sarajevo (east) and Banja Luka (northwest)

A central theme in Werewolf is the conflict between a the character's strong inner ideals, their enormous anger, and the utter destruction of nature. Werewolves walk a very difficult line between their human and wolf societies. They seek harmony between humans and nature, but they see the effects of science and technology destroying that harmony, which leads them to madness. They give spiritual terms to this conflict between Weaver (science and technology), Wyrm (rage and madness), and Apocalypse (end-times). Worse still, werewolves themselves are divided into different tribes are are not particularly friendly with each other.

The following review doesn't tell one much about the game system but it does have some creative skill in explaining the mental situation of werewolves.

Breeds consist of homid (born to humans), lupus (born to wolves). There is also metis (born to werewolves), but these are not available for starting characters. The blood of metis is too pure, and whilst they have the advantages of homids and lupus, they also tend strongly towards deformities and madness. It is a rule among the tribe - no breeding between werewolves.

The auspice is the phase of the moon of the character's first change (the rules say "when born", but the most recent edition refers to "first change"; the latter is preferable). This determines the personality, starting Rage, and roughly what sort of profession is best for the character. The choices are;

After choosing a breed, auspice and tribe, you are awarded points to spread out among attributes in three categories - physical (strength, dexterity, stamina), social (charisma,, manipulation, appearance), and mental (perception, intelligence and wits). You get 7, 5, or 3 points to distribute depending on what you allocate to each category. Every attribute starts at 1 dot, which is essentially the equivalent of a human child (trips on rugs, can’t carry more than 40 pounds, etc.). The maximum for each attribute is five, which represents a capability for ridiculously superhuman feats.

After this determine Abilities, which are also dividied into three categories; talents, skills, and knowledges, with 13, 9, or 5 points in each category. Finally you determine your Renown (according to Auspice), your character's standing among werewolves, your Backgrounds and Gifts (one from Breed, your Auspice, and Tribe), and Backgrounds (5 points normally)

3. Finishing Touches

Record Rage (determined by your Auspice), Gnosis (determined by your Breed), Willpower (determined by your Tribe). In additon to this there is a number of "Freebie Points" (15) at the start of character generation Spend your Freebie Points (15 points, cost of 7 for Gifts, 5 points for Attributes, 2 points for Abilities and Gnosis, 1 point for Willpower, Rage, Background, and Renown)

Game Mechanics

The basic time periods in Werewolf are turn (a few seconds), a scene (several minutes), a chapter (a connected group of scenes), a story (several chapters), and a chronicle (several stories).

For actions each character creates a dice pools of an attribute plus an ability (e.g., Perception plus Alertness). Successes are based around a target number, typically 3 to 9, with an average task difficulty number of 6. Note that I'll be playing that difficulty numbers will be a lot higher for mental skills if you don't have any skill in the relevant subject. Each die that is equal or above the target number is a success and multiple successes add to the degree of success. Every 1 that's rolled however cancels a success. If there are more 1's than successes (i.e., all successes have been cancelled and there's still 1's on the table) then a critical failure or "botch" has occurred.

A Willpower point can be expended to declare a single automatic success. Also, some actions require high number of successes to complete (e.g., twenty or more). These are called extended actions and may require multiple time periods. Some actions are also resisted by opponents; in these cases the greatest number of successes wins. Each opponent's success cancels one of your own. Finally, where appropriate, with teamwork successes can be added together. However, as an elaboration to the rules, sometimes the worst roll of a team will be used (e.g., multiple attempts to fast talk or sneak).

In action turns (usually combat) initiative is initially determined by the number of successes on an Wits+Alertness test with a usual difficulty number of 6. This is retained throughout the scene unless there is an major interruption in the sequence of events of some sort in which case it will be re-determined. An attack roll is based on Dexterity + Brawl (Fisticuffs), Perception + Firearms (Ranged, Firearms), or Dexterity + Melee (Melee Weapons), with variable difficulty levels. A defensive dodge is allowed (Dexterity + Dodge) as a pool with each success reducing the attacker's successes. The number of successes plus the weapon bonus equates to damage, with an opportunity to reduce the damage ("soak") by rolling Stamina+2 against a difficulty of the weapon's damage factor+3. For werewolves silver, biochemical, and other supernatural weapons cannot be soaked.

Health levels are measured in dice penalties; Bruised (superficial, no game effect), Hurt (-1), Injured (-2), Wounded (-3), Mailed (-4), Crippled (-5), Incapacitated (no actions, except self-healing). Werewolves (in form) can heal back one wound level every turn of bashing (\) or lethal damage (X). Silver, fire, and the physical damage from supernatural creatures constitute aggravated wounds (*). These cannot be healed at the normal rate. An incapacitated werewolf who takes aggravated damage is killed. A werewolf normally can take no other action when healing; if they attempt other actions they must make a difficulty 8 Stamina test and if that is failed they take another wound level.

Werewolves are subject to Rage in wolf-form. It is represented as a dice pool to increase the number of actions available, and is avaliable when the character suffers setbacks, serious wounds, or shame. It must declared on the turn prior to action. Rage game effects include (i) extra actions (up to half their permanent Rage pool), (ii) to change forms to any other form without a test, (iii) ignoring stun which prevents a werewolf from action the next turn, normally induced by taking more than Stamina damage in a turn, (iv) remaining active when incapacitated, with a Rage roll (difficulty 8) with each success healing a health level (once per scene only), (v) for every point of Rage higher than Willpower reduced a character's social interaction dice by 1, (vi) when Rage and Willpower is reduced to zero the character cannot regain Rage. When a character uses Rage they may be subject to Frenzy. Any Rage check (even from Gifts) can invoke Frenzy if four or more successes are rolled. Frenzy is an uncontrolled “fight or flight” reaction.

Gnosis is the attachment of the werewolf to the spirit world; many Gifts require a Gnosis test, or expenditure from a gnosis pool. A character cannot spend Rage and Gnosis in the same turn. The Willpower pool is used to give an automatic success to an automatic success to an action, or prevent an automatic instinctual action from occuring.

Changing form requires a Stamina + Primal Urge test. Difficulty is based on character's starting form (Full Human 6, Near Human 7, Wolf Man 6, Near Wolf 7, Full Wolf 6). The number of successes determines the number of potential 'steps' in the transformation.

The rules goverining Renown changed significantly in the first and second editions of the game. Renown is a measurement of the status of the character within Garou society and is differentiated between Glory, Honour, and Wisdom. In the first edition these traits are measured in hundreds and thousands of points. In the second edition these are acquired as a temporary pool; once ten points are reached they may engage in a Rite of Accomplishment which allows them to gain a dot level in the appropriate trait.

Experience points are gained at the end of each game session and at the end of each story. For each session their players attended the characters receive 1 point, for reciting what they learned they earn 1 point, and the characters receive 1 point for exceptional acting. For the end of story, they receive 1 point for success, 1 point for experiencing danger, and 1 point for displaying great resourcefulness.

First Story: The Kara?or?evo Conspiracy

Chapter One: Formation of the pack

The story starts at Saturday, 23rd March, 1991. It's the night of a first quarter moon, and the location is Viso?ica [Viso-chisa] hill, a flatiron geological formation that is roughly pyramid shaped, and over two hundred metres high. Located in central Bosnia-Herzegovina, the tree-covered hill also contains the old town of Visoki, a medieval defensive royal castle from the fourteenth century, which was abandoned by the early sixteenth century. The hill overlooks the town of Visoko, home to some forty thousand people.

Despite the significant population density of the region, there is still a great deal of natural parkland, making it quite possible for werewolves to move around without disturbance. It is in the remains of the castle on the hill, a famous multi-tribal caern, that the pups prepare themselves for the rite of passage, a test that will ensure that they are worthy of becoming adult members of the pack. Traditionally different tribes have their own rituals as appropriate; the Shadow Lords have a test of fighting skill, the Silent Striders take relics or messages through dangerous territory etc. It's emphasised that up to ten percent of werwolf pups die attempting the rite of passage.

Brought here on the command of the sept leaders, the pups have spent more than a few days camped out in the ruins. As a result they have gotten to know other pups who are in attendance. Each player-character should introduce their character, which tribe they belong too, their auspice, their likes and dislikes etc. At the end of this narrative, shortly before midnight when the moon is high in the sky, an older, silver-haired woman approaches, dressed very archically in traditional Bosnian rural clothes made from wool, flax, hemp and leather and carrying a multi-coloured staff. She introduces herself as Štefanija Kosa?a, a famous Silver Fang from a noble human family, and the unofficial leader of all the werewolves of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Štefanija explains that the young pups are going on a very special mission for their rite of passage with agreement with their sept leaders. This mission is one that requires the skills of different tribal traditions and auspices working together. Whilst the werewolves have avoided meddling in the affairs of humans, there is a smell in their air that suggests that they may not have a choice. Stjepan points out that in the last year the old communist parties, both here in Croatia, Slovenia, and Macedonia have lost power to nationalist groupings, and the communist parties in Serbia has been more interested in Serbian nationalism in any case. The League of Communists of Yugoslavia dissolved in 1990 along federal lines. Nationalist rhetoric has became increasingly heated. The scent of war between the apes is in the air.

For a long time mountainous and wooded Bosnia-Herzegovina has been a safe place for werewolves, one of the few such places in Europe. If war comes here, it would be a disaster for the werewolves, as it would be for all nature. Štefanija says she had seen the last war and the broken and burning landscape that it brought, and does not wish to see it happen again. She has recently learned from fellow werewolves that there is going to be a secret meeting between the presidents of Serbia and Croatia at Kara?or?evo. She fears that this meeting will bring war to the land. The mission of the pups is to journey to this place and find out what is being planned. She offers one last command with a look of concern: "There's not many of us left. Don't get killed".

The journey is a five hour drive (or, just as likely depending on Resources, seven hours via bus) from Visoko through Bosnia-Herzegovina to the south-eastern Croatian border then into north-western Serbia. The planned stop is in small town (population 14,000) of Ba? in Serbia (the autonomous province of Vojvodina), where a caern of the Children of Gaia (called Children of Veles in the Slavic lands) live. The pups are to meet at the ruins of the medieval Ba? Fortress at dusk on Sunday, March 24th. The journey itself is relatively uneventful, a meandering trip through forest, hill, valley, and numerous small towns. Whilst waiting for the allocated time a cursorary search of the castle grounds will reveal a large wooden totem of a dour-faced man next to the remains of the old castle walls, and somewhat hidden from the main tower, which is a regular visiting location for tourists.

Whilst the pups investigate this strange monument, an Orthodox priest approaches, still in full regalia. He explains to the pups that the monument is a dedication to Veles, an old pagan god, probably put up by some youngsters who have read too much history. If the pups ask more about Veles, the priest will explain that Veles was the god of the Earth and the underworld, emphasising that the underworld in Slavic mythology was not like the Christian hell, but rather a moist, green pasture and woodland with many supernatural beasts, the roots of the world tree. Veles was the god of autumn, earth and water, cattle and pasture, magic, music. He would often have creatures associated with him, like the bull, bear, snake, or wolf. He pauses for a moment: "... especially the wolf, and especially in these parts". If the pups don't immediately take the bait, he will make a few more mentions of how wolves are especially close to the earth in these parts, and how they are misunderstood etc. Finally, he may ask where the pups are staying, and offer accommodation at the Bo?ani monastery.

Bo?ani is a small village very close to Ba?, with less than a thousand people. The monastery, as the Father Andrej Djokovi? explains, was founded in 1478 where a spring was found to have a curative properties and healed blindness ("if you believe in such things!"). The monastry itself was once home to up to two hundred monks at its height. Now there is less than a dozen, who barely have sufficient time to keep the place in a state of repair, especially with water damage. Much of the several hectares of land that the monastry is based on was farmland, but has reverted to forest (".. but we prefer it that way"). It should become evident, once that he has their trust, that the entire monastry are werewolf Children of Veles.

Exploring inside the pups will discover many works of art by the 18th-century painter Hristofor Žefarovi?, especially of Saint Methodius and Saint Jeffrem, and various images of Christian unity, albeit some are clearly water damaged. The priest will explain that Hristofor believed that all South Slavs (including Bulgarians) were one and the same "Illyrian" people and sought "brotherhood and unity", using the phrase of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia. The priest explains that there are many people of different nationalities in the area. Whilst the village are mostly Serbs, they are less than half the population of the region; "... there are also many Slovaks, Croats, Hungarians, Romani, Romanians, Ruthenians, Bosnians - but all Yugoslavs!"

If they wander around further through the monastry (and they have leave to), they will eventually encounter a sitting room and library whose contents are somewhat different to the nominal Christian expressions they have seen. In here there are older artworks, including images of vampiric activities. If asked, Andrej will explain that there is an old Illyrian necropolis dating back from the 500's in a nearby village of Vajska and will patiently explain the reality of vampires.

The following day Father Andrej will outline the grounds of Kara?or?evo; an elite hunting resort and stud farm, some 70 square kilometers in size. Much of the area is deep woodland and marsh, with oak and acacia. The extensive woodlands are abundant with wild boar, deer, Eurasian elk (moose), wild goat, and water birds. And even a few wolves, of course. Bordering the woodland is a famous stud farm, established when the region was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, including Furioso-North Star (medium riding), Nonius (light draft, military), Gidran (powerful riding) breeds. Adjacent to the stud farm is the hunting lodge where Serbian President Slobodan Miloševi? and Croatia President Franjo Tu?man will meet this day. If the pups ask how Father Andrej knows this information, he will ask whether the pups *really* want to know, and ask them to think if it is safer for the contact if less people know. If they insist, it is Branimir Skalicky, a groundsman of Serbo-Slovak background.

The journey to the grounds takes less than an hour, with the pups dropped off on the edge of the woods. From cover they can see the stud farm, and then the hunting lodge. Patrolling around the lodge is sixteen armed Serbian and Croat regional police; not members of the Yugoslav Army. Four are on the roof of the two-story lodgehouse. They are armed with assault rifles, wear ballistic vests (level 3, protects against rifle bullets etc), and carry walkie-talkies. The front of the lodge has two armoured cars, one from each of the police, four motorcyles, two presidential vehichles, and two support vehicles. They're packing serious heat for a diplomatic meeting.

Assuming that the pups somehow get past these goons, whether by pure stealth, or stealthy violence, their entry into the lodge itself will require additional care. There is about a half-dozen normal human staff serving lunch and drinks to the assembled leaders. The two Presidents are in a private board room which is guarded by one member of each region, and another two inside. Each of these personal guards are average ranked vampires and sorcerers respectively, slightly tougher than the PCs if it comes to combat.

If the pups somehow get close enough they will overhear the discussion between the two Presidents. They will express a mutual distrust of each other and indeed a barely conceived loathing. Both will accuse the other of the breakdown of a long-standing agreement, but the terms will also include insults that indicate supernatural powers (for example, Tu?man will call Miloševi? a "bloodsucker", who responds calling Tu?man "a witch"). However, they will also both express a desire to partition Bosnia-Herzegovina. The discussions will be about the specific borders, but they will also make disparaging comments about the backward dogs that need to be put down on order for develoment, stability, etc. After a while it should be apparent to even the less bright pups that the two Presidents are talking about the extermination of werewolves.

It is possible that the pups can sneak in, overhear all this, and escape without anyone noticing. Chances are however, that something will go wrong and combat will occur. The pups should realise fairly quickly that they are seriously overmatched and should flee as soon as possible. Indeed, if conflict should occur it will be advantageous as it will be proof positive that vampires and mages have taken over the respective governments of Serbia and Croatia, and are seeking to exterminate the werewolf population.

* January 22nd. Croatian Defense Forces (HOS) established. Although the first HOS squad was established in January, the HOS was officially founded on 25 June 1991 by Dobroslav Paraga, Ante Paradžik, Alija Šiljak et. al. Notable for using the abbreviations, logo, and slogan-salute (Za dom spremni!) of the WWII fascist Croatian puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia and the Ustaše.

* March 25 Kara?or?evo agreement between Tu?man and Miloševi?. The topic of their discussion was the ongoing Yugoslav crisis, with rumours of an agreement to partition Bosnia.

* October 1, Siege of Dubrovnik (on Croatian coastline near Bosnia) begins, lasts until 31 May 1992 with Croatian victory against Serb forces.

* October 14-15. Bosnian Parliament approves "Memorandum on Sovereignty" with opposition from Serb parties. On 24 October 1991, the Serb deputies form the Assembly of the Serb People in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

* November 1991. Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia established. From May 1992 forward, the Herzeg-Bosnia leadership engaged in continuing and coordinated efforts to dominate and "Croatise" regions it controls.

* Unknown. Manja?a camp establised by Yugoslav National Army (JNA) in northern Bosnia, initially to house Croats from the Croatian War. With the start of the Bosnian War it will be managed by the Bosnian Serb forces and housing three thousand seven hundred inmates. During the period from late May 1992 to early August 1992, hundreds of detainees died.

1992

* January 9. Following a plebiscite in Serb areas, supported by 96% of voters, Serb assembly proclaimed the Republika Srbska, declaring it part of Yugoslavia. Serb held towns would be subject to ethnic cleansing.

* February 21. United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) is created by UN Security Council Resolution 743. Initial mandate is to ensure conditions for peace talks and to provide security in demilitarised safe-havens.

* February 22. Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina declares and passes a referendum for independence on 29 February, passed a referendum for independence. Referendum boycotted by Bosnian Serbs.

* March 11. Carrington-Cutileiro peace plan unanimously rejected by the Bosnian Serb Republic. They offer their own claiming about 2/3rds of Bosnia's territory, with a series of ethnically split cities and isolated enclaves, and leaving the Croats and Bosniaks with a strip of land in the centre of the republic. This is rejected by Culiteiro, but put forth a new draft which is accepted by the Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats on March 18. However on 28th March, Bosnian representative Izetbegovi? withdraws his signature after meeting with then US ambassador to Yugoslavia in Sarajevo.

* April 3. Siege of Mostar begins. The Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) bombard stakes control over large portions of the town. By 12 June 1992, the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) and the 4th Corps of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) in a joined action amassed enough strength to force the JNA out of Mostar. In 1993 this will give rise to a conflict between Croat and Bosnian forces.

* April 3-11. Battle of Kupres between Croatian Army and the Yugoslav People's Army. The objective of the battle was control of the strategic Kupres Plateau, controlling a major supply route. Result was a Yugoslav People's Army victory.

* April 5. Siege of Sarajevo begins, which will last until a ceasefire in October 1995. Serbian forces numbering some 13,000 with heavy weapon support blockade the city from May 2, trapping some 70,000 Bosnian lightly-armed forces. During the seige, approximately 6,000 Bosnian soldiers and 5,500 civilians are killed, including those from mass killings (such as the shelling of Markele market on 5 February 1994 and 28 August 1995); Serb military casulties were around 2,200. Between May 1992 and November 1995 the Bosnian Army constructed a tunnel between the city and the Sarajevo airport, controlled by the United Nations.

* April 7. Series of killings, rapes, and ethnic cleansing begins by Serbian military, police, and paramilitary forces carried out against Bosniak civilians in Fo?a region. Some 2,700 individuals go missing.

* April 8. The Croatian Defence Council (Croatian: Hrvatsko vije?e obrane, HVO) established as official military formation of the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia.

* April 15. The Army of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) formed. With inferior weapons lost significant territory in 1992 and 1993, with no major changes in 1994. It was not until the Split Agreement and NATO intervention that successful major offenses were carried out.

* May. ?elebi?i prison camp established and u sed by several units of the Bosnian Ministry of the Interior (MUP) and Croatian Defence Council (HVO) to house some 700 Bosnian Serbs POWs until its closure in December. Dretelj concentration camp established, run by the Croatian Defence Forces (HOS) and later by the Croatian Defence Council (HVO). During 1992 the HOS detained several hundred mostly Serb civilians, who were held in inhumane conditions, while female detainees were raped. From April to September 1993 Bosniaks were detained, reaching a peak of 2,270 detainees.

* May 6 Graz Agreement signed between Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadži? and Bosnian Croat leader Mate Boban. The agreement publicly declared the partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina between Republika Srpska and the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia.

* May 12. Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) officially leaves Bosnia and Herzegovina, however command chain, weaponry, and higher-ranked military personnel forms Army of Republika Srpska (Vojska Republike Srpske, VRS). This includes members who would become part of the Jedinica za specijalne operacije (JSO), the elite special forces of the Yugoslav State Security Service (RDB) in 1996.

* May 25. Omarska Camp established by Repulika Srbska Army. Remains open until August 1992; during the time there approximately 6,000 Bosniaks and Croats are placed in this concentration camp; approximately 750 die due to summary execution or starvation. Murder, torture, rape, and abuse of prisoners is common.

* May 30. Four detention camps—Trnopolje, Omarska, Keraterm and Manja?a officially opened on 30 May 1992 by Bosnian Serb Prijedor police chief Simo Drlja?a. Trnopolje detainment camp established by Bosnian Serbs. An estimated 30,000 inmates passed through it between May and November 1992, holding between 4,000 and 7,000 prisoners at any given time.

* June 5. UNPROFOR authorised for the protection of Sarajevo airport as mandated by Resolution 758 for humanitarian purposes, providing a security corridor to the city for aid convoys.

* June 7-26. Operation Jackal offensive by a combined Croatian Army (HV) and Croatian Defence Council (HVO) army against the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS). The HV and the HVO captured approximately 1,800 square kilometres (690 square miles) of territory.

* June 12. Siege of Biha? begins by the Army of the Republika Srpska, the Army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina and the Bosniak forces who would establish the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia. The seige is against Bosniak and Croation forces and civilians in Biha?. The siege continues until 5 August 1995, when it is lifted following Operation Storm. Almost 5,000 military and civilians were killed or missing.

* June 18. Bosnian forces receive an ultimatum from Croatian Defence Council (HVO) to establish the authority of the Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia and pledge allegiance to it. Conflict begins the following day, starting the Croat-Bosniak war.

* July. Keraterm Camp established by Repulika Srbska Army and remains open until 1994. Approximately 1250 Bosniaks and Croats are held as inmates; some 300 are killed.

* July 21. Agreement on Friendship and Cooperation between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia signed by Alija Izetbegovi?, President of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Franjo Tu?man, President of the Republic of Croatia, in Zagreb. It also placed the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) under the command of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH).

* August 9. Leaders of the HOS Croatian Defense Forces (Kraljevi? etc) assassinated by Croatian Defence Council (HVO) soldiers under the command of Mladen Naletili?. The HOS was mostly disbanded shortly afterwards, and absorbed by the HVO and the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina at the beginning of the Croat-Bosniak War.

* September. The Heliodrom concentration camp established by Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia and Croatian Defence Council to detain Bosniaks and other non-Croats. Housed thousands of predominantly civilians in overcrowded conditions and subject to torture. Closed April 1994.

* September 14. UNPROFOR given a mandate by the United Nations Security Council to protect humanitarian relief convoys as requested by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) and provide ground transportation for difficult routes.

* January 10. Croatian forces begin shelling Gornji Vaku, initiating a series of civilian massacres, summary executions, and military conflicts that constitute the Lašva Valley programme of ethnic cleansing. On 25 April at Zagreb a ceasefire is an immediate ceasefire is reached between President Izetbegovi? and Mate Boban.

* April 12. NATO commenced Operation Deny Flight to enforce the no-fly zone, established by United Nations Security Council issued Resolution 816, calling on member states to enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina. By its end on 20 December 1995, NATO pilots had flown 100,420 sorties, destroying a number of planes, command posts, and armoured vehicles of Republika Srpska.

* April 16 United Nations Security Council Resolution 819 provides UNRPOFOR authority to protect Srebrenica a "safe area" free "from armed attack or any other hostile act." In May 1993, Biha?, Sarajevo, Goražde, Žepa and Tuzla were also added as "safe areas".

* May 6. Bosnian Serb National Assembly rejects Vance-Owen Peace Plan. Referendum on May 15-16 rejected by 96% of voters. The proposal involved the division of Bosnia into ten semi-autonomous regions, received the backing of the UN. Although the President of the Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadži?, had signed the plan on 30 April.

* May 9, Croatian Defence Council attacks Bosnian Eastern Mostar reducing it to rubble. Bosniaks respond in September with Operation Neretva '93. Around 60 Croat civilians, combatants and POWs were killed. Operations ended in December with a stalemate.

* May 25. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICYT) established by Resolution 827 of the United Nations Security Council.

* June 1993. Vojno camp was a detention camp set up by the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) and runs to March 1994, to detain tens of thousands of Bosniaks in the Mostar municipality. Bosniaks in the camp were subject to killings, mistreatment, rapes, detention and murders

* July 8. Meeting between Slobodan Miloševi?, Radovan Karadži? and Ratko Mladi? took place with agreement that Serbs are to help Croats to force the Muslims to accept the partition of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

* August 20. UN Representatives Thorvald Stoltenberg and David Owen offer a peace plan that would split Bosnia into three ethnic states, with Bosnian Serb forces would govern 52 percent the territory territory, Bosniaks 30 percent, and Bosnian Croats would receive 18 percent. On 29 August 1993 the Bosniaks rejected the plan.

* September 27. Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia established by Bosniak Fikret Abdi?. Initially cooperating with both Serbian and Croatian forces, it increasingly became aligned with Serbian forces. It was overcome on August 7, 1995.

1994

* February 23. Croat-Bosniak war officially ends with the ceasefire signed in Zagreb by the Commander of HVO, general Ante Roso and commander of Bosnian Army, general Rasim Deli?.

* March 18. Washington Agreement signed in Vienna, a ceasefire agreement between the warring Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia and the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, establishing the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Signed by Bosnian Prime Minister Haris Silajdži?, Croatian Foreign Minister Mate Grani? and President of Herzeg-Bosnia Krešimir Zubak. Under the agreement, the combined territory held by the Croat and Bosnian government forces was divided into ten autonomous cantons, establishing the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

* June 2 - August 21. ARBiH launches Operation Tiger 94 against the Bosnian Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia, its leader Fikret Abdi? and his Serbian backers the Army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina (VSK), and the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS). The ABiH defeated the Province's forces; however they were able to recapture the territory in December 1994 in Operation Spider.

* August 28. Republika Srpska referendum (97% no, 3% yes) rejects the Contact Group (U.S., Russia, France, Britain, and Germany) partition plan referendum, which would have given Bosnian Serbs approximately 49% of Bosnia.

* October 20 - November 3. The Battle of Kupres between the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ARBiH) and the Croatian Defence Council (HVO) on one side and the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) on the other. Result is ARBiH and HVO victory.

* November 3. Swedish Airlines System Flight 347 highjacked at Oslo by Haris Ke?, a Bosnian living in Norway, who made demands that Norwegian authorities help to stop the humanitarian suffering in his home country caused by the Bosnian War. He surrendered after some of his demands had been met.

1995

* April 16. The United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 819, declaring Srebrenica a "safe area" with UNPROFOR troops arriving two days later. On 8 May 1993 agreement was reached of demilitarization of Srebrenica, however on July 6 a Serb offensive took UNPROFOR observation posts, and advanced into the city. By the evening of 11 July 1995, approximately 20,000 to 25,000 Bosniak refugees from Srebrenica were gathered in Poto?ari, seeking protection within the UN compound there. On 13 July, the Dutch forces expelled most of the five thousand Bosniak refugees from the United Nations compound. On 12 July Republika Srbska soldiers began began summary executions and rapes. As Bosnian civilians and escaping soldiers attempted to escape the blockade, there was a series of massacres and executions, including many who had surrended. By July 23, over 8000 Bosnians had been killed.

* May 26. Bosnian Serbs take 400 UNPROFOR peacekeepers hostage following NATO airstrikes and take them to to strategic points as human shields.

* May 27. An armed confrontation occurs between United Nations (UN) peacekeepers from the French Army and elements of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) resulting in UN peacekeepers retaking the observation post and a withdrawl from the VRS.

* July 21. Operation Miracle occurs, a a successful attack by the foreign troops of the Bosnian Mujahideen against the town of Kr?evine held by Republika Srpska.

* July 22. Mutual defence agreement between Croatia, the Croatian Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, signed in Split, Croatia. Seen as a turning point in the war, it resulted in modest military gains for both the Bosniak and Croat forces in Bosnia, but opened the path for the decisive Croatian offensive against the Republic of Serbian Krajina (RSK) and NATO intervention in Bosnia.

* August 30 - September 20. NATO's air campaign Operation Deliberate Force initiated in concert with UNPROFOR ground operations against Bosnian Serb army threats against UN-designated "safe areas". The campaign struck 338 Bosnian Serb targets. The campaign struck 338 Bosnian Serb targets, many of which were destroyed. Overall, 1,026 bombs were dropped during the operation, 708 of which were precision guided.

* October 10-13. The last major military operation undertaken by the Bosnian Army, in the series of general counteroffensives by Bosnian and Croatian forces following Operation Storm. After successful initial phases, Operation Sana ended because the Dayton Agreement was signed, ending the war. The operation was an ARBiH victory resulting in Sanski Most being retaken.

* November 1. The Dayton conference takes place from 1-21 November. The main participants from the region were the President of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Slobodan Miloševi? (representing the Bosnian Serb interests due to absence of Karadži?), President of Croatia Franjo Tu?man, and President of Bosnia and Herzegovina Alija Izetbegovi? with his Foreign Minister Muhamed Sacirbey.

* December 14-21. General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina meetings in Paris on 14 December 1995. The full and formal agreement was signed in Paris on 14 December 1995 and witnessed by French president Jacques Chirac, U.S. president Bill Clinton, UK prime minister John Major, German chancellor Helmut Kohl and Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. In February 2008 it was announced that the original of the Agreement had been lost.

A Dark Elf Solstice

by Ursula Vernon

Our D&D campaign has a tradition of doing a holiday story every year (or in the case of some of our members, holiday art--Lizardbeth made us AWESOME icons, and Natasha drew the entire party as reindeer.) Since I had this small saga of how the party's dark elf butler spent the holidays, I figured I'd share, for the possibly vague amusement of those of you who follow our D&D campaign.

If you don't have at least a passing knowledge of the Forgotten Realms setting, this is probably somewhat nonsensical, but most of it can be explained by saying that the books about drow were largely written for teenagers in the darkest throes of Angsty Angstness.

Useful knowledge: We acquired a dark elf butler by virtue of Rooster the paladin converting him to the worship of the Silver Weasel. Drow-Bob now runs our castle/tilapia farm. (Yes, the party has a tilapia farm. Castles don't pay for themselves. And we needed a place to put the ranger's hydra.) Ceri is our kleptomaniacal thief who cannot be left alone with anything shiny. Wilhelmina the gnome is our primary healer/brewmaster.

In this campaign, orphans are one of the always-evil races and the Order of the Silver Weasel burns orphanages whenever possible, to prevent Children of the Corn scenarios. (Don't question the logistics here. It's just that sort of campaign...)

On the dark battlements of the dark castle on the darkest night of the year, a dark elf brooded.

He was trying not to, but it wasn’t easy. Drow take to brooding the way ducks take to water and paladins take to armor polish. It was in their genes.

Drow-Bob, sworn servant of the Silver Weasel, leaned against one of the heavy stones and…yes, brooded.

It was Solstice Night, and he was in an unheated castle with questionable plumbing, waiting for his employers to come home.

It wasn’t like he had to be at the castle. There was a roaring party going on down at the Temple of the Silver Weasel--Drow-Bob could just make out flames breaking out, far down in the town--and he’d gotten an invitation. It was a very nice invitation, signed by the Lord Marshall of the West himself, although the Lord Marshall had seen fit to include a postscript that said “And whatever you do, don’t tell Rooster! As far as he knows, we’re all doing a vigil in the snow on our knees!”

Drow-Bob didn’t really know how to feel about that.

At least if he went to the Weaselite celebration, he’d be welcome. You had to give the paladins that. Once you converted, you were a brother or sister in the Weasel, and that was the end of the matter. There was an orc paladin and a couple of kobold acolytes and he’d heard rumors that at one of the other temples, they had a beholder who had renounced evil and was trying to atone for its earlier lifestyle. Dark elves didn’t even merit a raised eyebrow.

When they said “convert or die,” it was a genuine choice and they didn’t second-guess you afterwards.

You didn’t get that everywhere. He’d gone down to the co-op the other day, and the staff was very nice--sure, they’d given him a coupon for organic kelp smoothies, but they probably didn’t mean anything bad by it--but he had overheard a couple of other shoppers talking.

“There’s a dark elf on aisle three.”

“Oh lord, better get out of here before he angsts at you.”

“But I need organic semolina flour.”

“Leave it, Larry! A dark elf got ahold of my cousin Ed and he was wearing black nail polish for two months! It’s not worth it!”

Drow-Bob sighed. He could have told them a few things about angst. It didn’t have anything to do with being a dark elf.

“You try being a butler for a crew who hares off for weeks on end without warning and leaves you in charge of a fish farm! I had to trim the hydra’s claws last week! The toenail clippers slipped and it grew another leg!”

He envied other dark elves. All they had to worry about was the crushing despair of being hated by everyone you met. He had to keep the kobolds out of the tilapia.

Drow-Bob sighed. He was brooding again. He shouldn’t. Really, he wasn’t unhappy to have converted. Life in the Underdark was nasty, brutish, and not nearly short enough. After the first century, you started to wonder if it was all really worth it.

They didn’t celebrate Solstice in the Underdark. There wasn’t much point. Mushroom-based agriculture doesn’t worry about the seasons.

They did do a thing with a giant wicker spider and then they stuffed prisoners into the legs and--well, best not to think about that.

It hadn’t been festive at all.

Much better to be up here in the castle. No wicker anything. One of the kobolds had found a wicker chair at a garage sale last week, but he’d had it burned, just to be on the safe side.

And his employers had gotten him some very thoughtful gifts.

Very thoughtful.

He was still thinking about them, as a matter of fact.

There had been an entire raw cow haunch, wrapped in burlap, from Redfur. She apparently had been a little worried that he wouldn’t know what it was, under the wrapping, so there was also a note saying “ThS IZ cOww luV rEdFUr” written in blood on the burlap.

Rooster had gotten him a very nice leatherbound volume of Daily Weasel Affirmations. There was an encouraging note in the front about being a valued member of the team and to give himself a bonus.

Drow-Bob fished it out, opened a page at random, and read

Yea, though I walk in the barren plain of Very Bad Nasty Things With Giant Teeth, I shall fear nothing, for the Weasel is with me and therefore I am the baddest mother around.

In some ways, it was a reassuringly straightforward faith.

There was a half-chewed horse-hoof inside, for a bookmark.

From Wilhelmina, he had gotten a bottle of clear amber liquid, with a note saying that it should be kept away from open flame, closed flame, heat sources, and for god’s sake, don’t drop it.

Rush had given him a day-planner. It mapped out suggested castle changes for the next six months and was bound in wyvern hide. It included such instructions as “Put the vault here. Put the decoy vault for Ceri here,” and it came with a very nice pen.

Inix had gotten him an extremely thoughtful gift. He knew it was extremely thoughtful, because Ceri had left a note inside the box saying “IOU one extremely thoughtful gift.”

(He couldn’t get angry. For Solstice, she had returned all of his missing socks, including at least one pair he could have sworn he’d left in the Underdark. He was still a little confused by that.)

Really, you couldn’t complain with employers like that. In the Underdark, a good day was a day when nobody decided to beat you with the snake-headed whips.

“’Scuse me, sir,” called a voice from below.

Drow-Bob leaned back. It was Lumpy, one of the brighter kobolds. “Yes?”

“There’s people here, sir.”

Drow-Bob sighed. “It’s not more orphans, is it?” Solstice brought out plagues of orphans, most of them with little crutches and delicately consumptive coughs. The kobolds had been shoving them into the spike pit, but a couple of them had been eating the others and were getting big enough that they’d have to get some paladins out to put the nasty little buggers down.

“Um. No, sir…”

“Or carolers? Because the last time we had carolers, the hydra hid under Miss Inix’s bed and it took us ages to get the mattress out of the tree.”

Lumpy scratched his ear. He had a lump on it. It looked infected, but so did most of Lumpy. “Err. Here, are you lot carolers?”

There was some hurried conversation below.

“Do we need to carol?”

“I think I know the words to “Tyr Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen…”

“I can play the handbell. If you have a handbell, I mean. I don’t carry one with me…”

There were three men standing in the courtyard, one tall, one short, one in the middle. They did indeed have camels. They looked a bit confused.

“I don’t have a handbell,” said the short one. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“I don’t know,” said Drow-Bob. “Is it?”

There was a long moment of silence.

“I’ve got a camel bell,” said the middle one.

“Well, there you go,” said the short one, looking relieved. “Crisis averted! What did you want me to play?”

“I don’t want you to play anything,” said Drow-Bob. “What are you doing here?”

He gave Lumpy an unobtrusive hand signal. Lumpy sauntered off to go boil some oil, in case this was the vanguard of an invasion.

It was a very disorganized vanguard. The tall one and the short one had a brief, furious conversation in another language. The middle one leaned over to Drow-Bob and said “Between you and me, I think they’re a bit lost.”

“Aren’t we all…” muttered Drow-Bob.

“Right!” said the short one. “Um. Have you got a manger?”

“A what?”

“Sort of, um. Food trough. For animals, you know?”

Drow-Bob raised an eyebrow. “We’re a fish farm.”

The short one rocked on his heels for a moment. “Fish farm. Oh dear. Yes. Um. Ah…nothing trough-like? Maybe? Nothing that could be repurposed to be a trough, say?”

“We’ve got a pellet delivery system,” said Drow-Bob. He was not wondering why he was discussing fish-farming with crazy people in the middle of the night. His employers had pretty well broken him of any such feelings. He was a trifle annoyed to see that one of the camels had crapped in the middle of the courtyard, but that was all.

“Pellet…delivery…system…” said the short wizard slowly.

“It’s a trough, I suppose. About two inches wide, eight feet long. We drop the pellets into the hopper and they slide down into the tilapia tank.”

The short wizard consulted with his colleagues.

After a moment he said “Um. Two inches wide, eight feet long--well. You couldn’t fit a baby into it, could you?”

“I suppose you could,” said Drow-Bob, “if you minced it very fine.”

The middle wizard barked a laugh and covered his mouth. The tall wizard looked appalled.

“No,” said the short wizard. “Oh dear. No. That won’t work--at least, I don’t think it would--no, probably not at all. Not a good idea. Oh dear. Um.” He pulled out a much-folded map and stared down at it. “Um. Perhaps we’ve taken a bit of a wrong turn.”

“Told you,” muttered the middle wizard.

“We were following a star, you see. A particularly shiny one--“

“I’ll stop you right there, gentlemen,” said Drow-Bob. “There is nothing shiny in this castle. Every shiny object has been removed. Sometimes by force. I had to blacken the brass drawer pulls. Nothing shiny has come this way.”

The wizards consulted their map, then each other. The tall one stared at the sky as if hoping a star would appear. It didn’t.

Another camel emptied its bowels on the pristine dust of the courtyard.

“Well, then,” said the short wizard, putting on a determinedly cheerful expression. “Well! No one said this would be easy, did they?”

“Not to me, they didn’t,” said Drow-Bob.

“Indeed. Indeed. Very well. Back to where we saw the star last, brothers. Sorry to have taken your time, sir, and do have a very nice Solstice. I suppose we can’t perform “Tyr Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen?” for you? No? All right, then. We’ll be on our way.”

The three wizards turned their camels--not without some difficulty--and left the castle. Drow-Bob gazed at the camel piles in mute resignation.

“The oil’s heating nicely,” said Lumpy, putting his head back into the courtyard. “Almost warm! Give it another hour or so and--oh, they’re gone.”

Drow-Bob sighed. “It’s all right. I think they were just lost.”

“Chopping up babies for fish food,” said Lumpy. “I don’t approve of that, sir. There’s evil and then there’s gratuitous.”

“Your vocabulary astounds me, Lumpy. I shall have to give you a promotion.”

“She helped us set up the still!” said Lumpy proudly. “We weren’t getting anything above forty proof before she got involved, but she fixed that right up. And Mister Woad-Bob, he’s been saving up the wasp honey and so we made a very nice bit of kobold krupnikas, and if you’d like to join us, sir…”

Oh, what the hell, thought Drow-Bob. Yea, though I drink in the company of kobolds, I will fear nothing, for the Weasel is with me…

He followed Lumpy into Woad-Bob’s orchard, and didn’t even mind that somewhere along the way, he’d stepped in camel poop.

The Ambrov X Console Game

by Wendy Allison

Hey Look! A Woman!

Being a female gamer involves a lot of accepting that the development world sees men as the default gamer. This means accepting that in more games than not you will be forced to play a guy because a female protagonist is not an option. It means that playing a woman often means slaying dragons in a bikini. And almost without fail, it means that in marketing material you are invisible, even in games that allow female protagonists. Even my first and biggest love, Dragon Age, which is known for its inclusivity, is so far failing to acknowledge women as protagonists [1] in the marketing material for the latest instalment in the series.

Globally, women make up 45% of gamers [2] yet the majority of marketing of games is towards young men, and when women are marketed to, it's often under the assumption that what we like is pink frilly stuff and puppies. I have 29 games on my current game shelf, all more recent than 2003. Of those, 10 of them allow you to play a female protagonist. It's notable that of the 10, 6 are made by the same developer.

So imagine the thrill I got when Ambrov X came on my radar. The first thing I saw at the top of their Kickstarter page [3] was.. a woman. A female protagonist, featured in their marketing as default. This is a game that allows you to choose the gender of your protagonist, and they chose to feature women! OMG.

Scrolling down, I liked what I saw more and more. A story-driven sci-fi RPG set in a universe I'd never heard of, but with a pretext of being forced by circumstances into a dangerous symbiotic relationship with a companion, that you must maintain without fear or you both die. Meanwhile, you're investigating a mystery and solving universe-sized problems in the standard RPG way.

I like the story-driven aspect, I like the premise, I like the episodic nature of the game that means relatively low time-commitment, I like that it's DRM-free and will run on Linux (even though I don't use Linux, it's nice to see it getting a nod you know?), I like the paradigm conversation system, I like that combat is only a part of what the game involves. As a lover of RPGs, I am always disappointed when a game claims to be RPG but is really just combat with a loose story to tie it together. This promises to be much more.

But mostly, I like that the developers are acknowledging that women gamers exist and that some people actually like emotional content. I'm a fan of Jennifer Hepler's writing and would like nothing better than to see her come on board for this game.

But, by doing all of these things, by making women the default, by placing how the story might make you feel over how big a monsters you can kill or how many headshots you need to get a badge, they are taking a risk. Many people will see that woman at the top of the page, then read 'emotional content' and close it. You can see by the amount of pledges that the dudebro FPS crowd that the vast majority of big-selling developers generally pander to, are not interested in this game. Of course they aren't - it's not them in the picture for a change.

It's me. And I would really like to see this game get made, because few developers are brave enough to even acknowledge my existence when marketing, never mind place me as the default.

If we want to see games made that step outside the young-white-male-as-default paradigm, we have to support the making of such games. And this one looks like it'll actually be a good game too. So please, if you give a crap about changing the culture of gaming, if you've ever felt miffed that developers always seem to assume their audience is male, if you want content that's truly story driven, or even if you would just like to see a cool RPG from an indie developer get some success, make a pledge.

Or if donating to making games is beyond your resources or ethics, even just boosting the signal would help, eh?

Ingress: A Story, A Review, an Appeal

by Lev Lafayette

First Portal Captures: An Ingress Story

It was a party in North Melbourne that information was given to me by an old friend that would change everything. He told me that following the Higgs-Boson experiments a new type of matter was discovered at CERN; "exotic matter", that included "structured data". This data, or exotic matter, was seeping into the world through "portals", locations of public art or notification. Essentially, any place where a type of communication was being tempted. These portals were located through an simple smart 'phone application.

The communications were being sent by an alien intelligence, which my friend argued cogently that we should be assisting. After all, who wouldn't want to help aliens communicate with us? Well, plenty of people apparently. A faction had arisen that called themselves "The Resistance" and their stated purpose was to use the exotic matter, or "XM", to block portals from what they considered to be an attempt at alien mind control. In contrast the people who supported the alien communication attempts called themselves "The Enlightened", and saw this is as the next stage in human evolution.

The following night I downloaded the application, listened to the initial agent transmission, and went outside of my estate. The initial scans were good; no less that six portals were in close proximity. Only one was controlled by the Resistance, the rest unowned. Despite the darkness and inclement weather, I took the opportunity to wonder down to the riverside where three of the portals were located, passing a gaggle of teenagers in the park who were drinking cheap alcohol-pops and generally being loud and silly.

It should be emphasised that it was particularly dark and windy night and the tree branches swayed and creaked, as I made my way down the unlit path to the deserted road that led to the three portals. Two were notifications for parkland and, as per my training, I deployed resonators on them and linked them together. I then hacked the portals using the scanner application, and received more resonators and bursters; the former used to empower the portal for the faction, the latter used to destroy an opponents control. The third portal was a little less accessible, a lot closer to the river's edge, a notice for a bat colony. Again, I deployed the resonators, hacked, and linked it to the other two portals. A field appeared on the scanner covering the triangular region, covering the colony. I wondered what would happen to the bats with their newfound connection with an alien shaper intelligence.

I made my way back up the path to the main park, and approached the fourth portal, repeating the process. This time however two of the teenagers came up to me, a young woman and apparently her boyfriend, or maybe at least someone who wanted to be her boyfriend. "Whatchya doin'?", asked the young woman in baggy clothes and brown regrowth in her yellow-blonde hair. I didn't bother turning to them "Hacking portals", I responded. I paused a bit and thought of things from their perspective. "With an 'app'". That would be at least that was within their language.

They looked at each confused, so I showed them the scanner, and explained how it worked. As I started to head towards my final portal for the night (the one that was already owned was too well protected) they outloaded a barrage of questions to me; what's the app? where can I download it? what's a portal? where's the portal? why is it a portal? what's a resonator?, and then the clincher. "Why are you doing this?"

I stopped dead in my tracks, turned to them and said, with all seriousness: "For the aliens".

Perhaps it was a forlorn hope that would see them off. But I'd made the mistake of actually showing them the scanner and instead of writing me off as some crazy middle-aged guy who wore too much black, they were genuinely interested. "Really?!", said the young woman, her eyes opening wide as she giggled. "Tell me more!". So, I went through the back story, filling in some gaps as I went. I admit I was slightly horrified when they told me they didn't know what CERN was, let alone the Higgs-Boson.

As we approached the final portal, the wind picking up even further, and dark clouds began to block out what little moonlight was previously available. It is important to mention at this stage that where I live is a converted Victorian-era asylum, and the last portal is the remains of the morgue located outside the grounds. I explained this to the youngsters as we travelled in the dark. It was well known that the asylum itself had been subject to at least three Royal Commissions for the mistreatment of patients. Had the bodies been mistreated at the morgue? It seemed almost certain.

My mind started to wonder further. Were all the bodies brought the morgue actually dead? What tortures had been inflicted upon them? Would these tortured thoughts remain at the ruins, a psychic record of time in the universe which exotic matter can reveal? Could the aliens 'read' this history, if the resonators were installed? What would the aliens think of us if they contacted these spiritual remains? Disconcertingly, as if I my thoughts had been transmitted, the young woman asked "Can the aliens talk to ghosts?". Perhaps by joining the Enlightenment the Shaper influence had given me a limited form of telepathy, which I had no conscious control at this stage. Or it could have been just coincidence.

It must have been a series of coincidences then, as possum rattled off its demonic howl, there was a sudden pickup of the wind, and almighty flash of lightning illuminating the swaying oaks and firs, the stark branches from the former reaching down and touching the young man on the shoulder, causing him to leap forward in surpise and fear. A heavy rumble of thunder rolled afterwards, and from somewhere deep inside me came the instinct to throw my head back and laugh and scream as another lightning flash exploded.

The youngsters turned and ran, and I can't say I blame them. That was not my voice; that was the voice of a mad woman from decade's ago, a voice that was now part of me. So in a way the Resistance was right - joining the Enlightenment had changed my mind, but perhaps not in the way they expected. I deployed resonators on the morge and offered a short apology to the victims of those who died under the knife of 'rationality' for their madness. It is alien within us that so many fear.

Ingress : A Review

Ingress is a real-time augmented reality game produced by Niantic, a subsidiary of Google, played by at an estimated several hundred thousand people that has been in beta-mode for the better part of two years now. Heavily deriviative from the game "Shadow Cities" (some say 'ripped off'), it makes use of Google maps as an overall for a massive multiplayer game. At the moment, it is only available for Android devices, but it is expected that Apple iOS phones will be available soon.

The basic backstory is as follows; following the Higgs-Boson experiment, "exotic matter", or XM, has been entered the world at the behest of an alien species. This exotic matter especially appears at portals, locations of public art or other expression. A US government agency, NIA (National Intelligence Agency) established for low probability / high effect risks (such as alien communication), become aware of XM and assembled a team to study it, especially noting the productive effects on those in the presence of XM. According to the backstory it was this team which developed the detection and manipulation program that could be converted into a simple mobile 'phone application. Part of the team, having been exposed to a large amount of XM, decides that they must escape the project but are hunted down and killed by NIA operatives; however the body repairs itself and the teammember (Jarvis) continues to appear at portals. Jarvis argues that we must accept the alien intelligence, and whereas NIA seeks to prevent and control it.

Two factions thus have arisen in response to these alien "invasion"; the Enlightenment who believe that the aliens are seeking towards a transformation of the species, and the Resistance, who argue the aliens are taking over people's minds. The factions compete to control the portals through deploying resonators, rated from level one to eight, an destroy opponent-controlled portals through using bursters, also rated from level one to eight. Portals can also have modifications applied, such as shields, defensive weaponary, heat sinks, and so forth. Portals can also be linked through portal keys; when three portals are linked in a triangle, then the area within is considered be controlled by the faction, adding to the "mind units". The distance that a portal can link depends on the strength of the portal, plus any additional enhancements added.

From the Ingress invitation:

Life seems “normal” but your world is being infiltrated. A mysterious energy has been unlocked by a team of scientists in Europe and is spreading around the world. The origin and purpose of this force is unknown, but some researchers believe it is influencing the way we think. We must control it or it will control us.

There are two factions. The Enlightened seek to spread this influence. The Resistance struggle to protect what’s left of our humanity.

The World is the Game

Move through the real world using your Android device and the Ingress app to discover and tap sources of this mysterious energy, acquire objects to aid in your quest, deploy tech to capture territory, and ally with other players to advance the cause of the Enlightened or the Resistance.

Gameplay is based on players (or "Agents", in Ingress parlance) travelling to the portals and capturing, modifying, and linking them. Actions require XM energy to carry out, but fortunately this stuff can be found lying around all over the place - but of course mostly near portals which generate a fair amount. Adding to a fairly good backtory, this is perhaps the best feature of the game. The game requires for players to go outside, an unusual activity itself for computerised games in its own right. Furthermore, the game encourages exploration and, if interesting portals have been assigned correctly, it enables individuals to discover places and monuments which they may have previously not been aware of. Who knew there's a "Fountain of Contemplation" behind the Orica building in Melbourne? I've walked past it for over twenty years and had no idea. With a seamless Google Maps overlay, there has been more than a few times I've been able to use Ingress as a navigation tool for non-Ingress related activies, not the least being for finding parking.

Another positive feature of the game is the level of social interaction that it encourages. They game is certainly playable and enjoyable as a person going out and doing their own thing, indeed for an introvert who enjoys going on long walks in an urban environment but not necessarily interacting with people, it's great. For people who desire more social interaction however there is plenty of opportunities; communication channels are available for "all" and "faction" groups (and don't confuse the two), groups organise farms of factional deployment and raids on opposing faction's strongholds. Even in small groups it can be nicely integrated with normal life; at our Enlightened-based workplace we tend to take a post-lunch walk around the city, engaging in a bit of a 'smash-and-grab' activity on the way. Some of the more impressive social activiies include massively co-ordinated actions throughout entire cities, regions, and even continents to build "megafields" which cover vast areas, albeit usually for a relatively short time. The "Green Marble" is one such impressive international effort that spanned a huge proportion of the northern hemisphere.

The game is not always competitive however; there is a number of examples of cross-factional social gatherings and cooperation. A relatively popular activity is for the two factions to come to an agreement to allow for signwriting constructed from portal fields. For example, during the recent crisis in the Ukraine, as the proposect of a military conflict with Russia increased, agents of both the Enlightened and Resistance factions let their feelings be known with the message "Stop War". Whilst the game can be intensely competitive at times (don't get attached to your portals, they will be taken down), in most cases players are sensible enough to realise that it's a game of walking around and visiting places and really not worth getting terribly angry about. Only in one case have I encountered a player who was abusive because I had *failed* to take down their portal, and they were getting annoyed by the noification messages. When such people are encountered, the game does give one the opportunity to block communications. Unpleasant players are, of course, a situation that occurs in any multiplayer game. It should be mentioned that from what I've seen Ingress – and it's an awful state of affairs that this even has to be mentioned a review - doesn't seem to be as bad as other games when it comes to the treatment of female players, either; it seems that the demographic tends to a little older and more mature.

So far this review has tended towards the positive. However Ingress is not entirely the land of milk and honey due to some utterly perplexing interface and design decisions. Until recently, for example, mass recycling of resonators and bursters was not possible. Recycling is a common activity for agents who find themselves short of XM energy due to activity, or counter-attacks from enemy portals. Given that each player has a maximum cap of some two thousand items, it is not unusual for a player to have well over a hundred items that they wish to recycle, typically low-level resonators, bursters, or portal keys in locations they are unlikey to visit soon. The tiring process of recycling each one of these items individually what somewhat frustrating. Certainly this has now been improved, and the less recent addition of capsules (a container for items) was long overdue. The standard intel map that the game offers is notoriously bad, lacking in most useful information; much-improved third-party intel maps and clients have been made available, but as recently as March 2014 Niantic was sending out Terms of Service violation letters for using such improvements. There are many user interface improvements that could be introduced; a grid-based layout of inventory, key filtering, notification filtering (I don't care about the portals I took on the interstate holiday, but my 'home' portals are something different), and a portal with time of ownership marker.

Whilst the user interface could do with some major improvements, this is not the major drawback of the game. That comes down to a design which is significantly unbalanced to the faction in a region which has numerical superiority. Whilst one would expect that the faction with the greater numbers would have an advantage, in Ingress it is disproportionally so due to deployment limits and resulting portal strengths. Individuals are only able to deploy two modifications, one level 8 resonator, one level 7, two level 6s, and two 5s on a portal. Because portal strength is based on this deployment which in turn determines the strength of goods received, the team with numerical superiority will gain better protected and more powerful portals faster - not to mention that faction-aligned portals provide more goods than oppostion portals. The only advantage for the numerically inferior faction is that opposition resonators provide 100 AP, albeit with XM damage - this is handy a low levels, but pretty useless from mid-level onwards.

Overall, cleverness in play is relatively unrewarded compared to sheer numerical superiority. As a result of these biases and utterly artificial restrictions the game is a lot less enjoyable than it could be, and cities tend towards being dominated by one faction or another, rather than a contest being in place. Not only is not fun for the losing side, who are subject to their small collection being smashed by overwhelming numbers, it is not fun for the winning side either, as relatively no strategy or tactics is involved. The game becomes boring and indeed, this is where activity in the game grinds almost to a halt. If one faction wins, effectively the game is over.

By way of illustration consider a small hamlet consisting of three players and three portals, two resistance and one enlightened. For purposes of the discussion the three players do not leave the village and nor are there any other landmarks that can be used to increase the number of portals. Each player is equally active and equally competent. In a balanced game, the game will tend towards two portals being owned by the Resistance and one by the Enlightened. There will be some changes of course, as it is dynamic game partially governed by luck, but that would be the general trend. However in Ingress, one has to take into account the fact that the Enlightened player is limited to what they can deploy on their portals; two mods, 1 level 8 resonator, 1 level 7 etc., as previously shown. The Resistance players will be able to fill up their portals with mods and deploy twice as many high-level resonators. Their portals will be stronger, they will be of higher level, able to mete out more damage, and very soon the game will result in 3 Resistance portals and 0 Enlightened.

There is no easy solution to these design flaws. Altering the portals so that factions-owned portals distributed resonators and enemy portals distributed bursters would provide some evening and in-game plausibility, but not the main design bias. Removing the deployment limits as it currently stands would result in the creation of increasingly massive individually constructed high-level portals, removing the social aspect of the game and discouraging new players as they encounter extremely well-protected high-level portals. But this is mainly because all portals are considered equal; the Great Pyramid of Giza is just as legitimate as a portal as someone's graffiti tag on a back alley in Fitzroy or a favourite curry restaurant. If portals were assigned level limits based on their significance (Giza L8, graffiti tag L1, for example), it would provide the ability to remove the artificial need deployment limits, it would create a situation where players of different levels sought different portals to take over and aspired for level increases, and it would better suit the internal game story.

Such a change however would require quite a few fairly skilled assessors, and given Niantic's track record on administration the chances are it being implemented are not high. Portal submissions can take a very long time to be accepted; my first submission, a monument to the the Kew Cottages Fire in April 1996 took almost six months to be processed; I was about to ask the question "How many mental patients need to die in a fire before Niantic will accept their monument as a portal?" in the very week it was accepted. In the converse, there are many examples of "joke portals" that have been accepted, including strategically photographed toys, live animals (my portal moved!), and thoroughly normal fixtures like bollards and park benches.

Finally, there is the question of whether existing technology is up to scratch for Ingress. Players can often be frustrated by the sometimes remarkable inaccuracies of GPS as they attempt to capture or deploy a portal. Ingress is also quite notorious at rate it chews through battery life; regular players tend to keep their 'phones charged whenever possible and/or carry extra battery packs. Also, the game itself is not exactly stable, perhas as one may expect with a real-time MMO using relatively low-powered technology. All of this is not exactly the fault of Niantic, except in the sense that they are desparate for (if so inaccurate) massive data collection that must provide at least some sense of a business case for this game.

Overall, with a good background, an semi-innovative approach, and deliberate structures to encourage compelling game play (such as territoriality, incremental improvement, availability, and and social connectivity), there is a lot to said for Ingress. Sometimes these compelling features can be downright dangerous; at least one person has been killed whilst playing Ingress (run over by a bus) and there's probably those who engage in dangerous driving whilst playing. On the other hand, the user interface, technological limitations, and especially the game design stand as very significant negatives to the game. It ends up being fun for a short while, and as part of the occasional social gathering. But after that it becomes more a part of habit (“Go for a walk after lunch, hack some portals”) with increasing distinterest in how the game is actually developing. To put it bluntly, when it's good it's very good, but when it's bad, it's bloody awful.

The Resistance: An Appeal

To members of the Resistance,

You are winning this world. Each checkpoing, each cycle, I see the strength of the Resistance. Sometimes the Enlightened are ahead, but usually it's you. In my home town, you're usually ahead by a ratio of 4:1 - far more than the global average which seems to hover around 55% to 45%.

You see, I understand you. As the Scanner was first turned on you had a choice; Enlightenment or Resistance - and you chose the latter. I would have as well on first reaction too, if I was not suggested otherwise by a friend who told me the story of how things came to pass.

Resistance is the first instinctual reaction for people in the modern age; it's deep, it's visceral, it's a reaction to a world which seems controlled by others, typically government agents, corporations, or both - and we know what the term of the system of government when the corporate world is fused with the state, don't we?

We think of resistance movements, where civilians stand up to an organised military invasion. We have pride in such people, it invokes righteous thoughts of determined but average people stand up to defend themselves against an overwhelming foreign invasion. In a more contemporary sense, we think of people standing up to various governmental conspiracies - secret agents, "the men in black" and so forth. Perhaps we think of series like the X-Files, where governmental conspiracies exist to protect and enhance aliens takeovers. Surely we want to resist that?

We also have a negative reaction to the notion of "the Enlightened". Too many people in the past have used this as a cloak to seek control, and we are justly suspicious of claims to enlightenment among others, "we are doing this for your own good". We hear of conspiracies by the Illumaniti. To oppose such "enlightened" individuals, one applies Resistance.

The forces behind the Resistance are very clever indeed at their marketing. Just to realise how clever, we need to examine the story of Ingress.

After the discover of Exotic Matter at CERN, the US National Intelligence Agency sent in a group of agents to investigate what appeared to be attempts by aliens to communicate with earth. The NIA neurobiologist, Dr. Ezekiel Calvin, assembled a team including Dr. Oliver Lynton-Wolf, who developed the Scanner.

Two members of the team, Dr. Devra Bogdanovich, and the artist Roland Jarvis, realised that the experiments being conducted by the NIA team where not aimed at reaching any sort of peaceful understanding with the aliens, but rather they sought to harness the XM for their own ends. Escaping NIA clutches they were hunted down and killed, but with the exposure to XM, Roland Jarvis lived on in spirit.

The scanner algorithm has been leaked, and Jarvis encourages people to find XM and harness it themselves to be able to communicate with this new alien species. The Resistance seeks to prevent that.

Let me make this quite clear to you, Resistance agents: By supporting the Resistance, you are backing a conspiratorial group within the United States government to prevent individuals from harnessing XM and communicating with aliens.

That's what you're being used for. You're the conspiratorial government agents in this, stopping people from being given access to the power and freedom that comes from XM energy.

Like I said, good marketing by forces behind the Resistance. Good marketing NIA; you have been trained well in damage-control and public relations, I am sure.

But then there is the argument, I hear you say, "The alien communications are being used to change our minds! They're engaging in mind control!".

No, they're not. They're communicating and mixing their minds with ours; that's how they communicate and that's how we as people and as species evolve. What have we called aliens in the past? Strangers, foreigners, sorjourners - people who we are not familiar with, who speak a strange language, who have unusual customs. We used the term to describe the mentally ill and insightful in the past; those who studied their minds were called "alienists".

But it was from encounters with such people that we have grown as a species, that we have come to understand the different nuances and approaches that comes form many minds in communication with each other.

How different is this now? It's just one more step for even further evolution. It is one more step to go from communication within the species, to that of a new species - an intersteller species in that incredibly vast region of space.

All of our lives we have gazed to the heavens wondering if anything is there. Surely we could not be the only life, the only minds, in the universe, a mere speck on a lightbeam, a pale blue dot in the enormity of the universe?

Having encountered such minds are we really so small, so inward looking, so backward, that we reject them? Is our future really just to remain as we are? A species incapable of even coming to peace with itself even though it is nothing in the cosmos?

Don't we want to go beyond this?

This is our chance, to evolve. Perhaps it will be our only chance. If the Resistance win, the aliens will turn away; "we gave them the chance, and they rejected us - we shall leave them on their speak of dust suspending on lightbeam, lonely and cold in the far reaches of space".

Do you want to be responsible for that?

To be Enlightened, as the philosopher Immanual Kant, described it in the following terms: "Sapere aude! (Dare to know!) 'Have the courage to use your own understanding,' is therefore the motto of the enlightenment".

If you have the courage to reach out to the heavens, you should join us.

Retire from Resistance. Join the Enlightenment.

- Transmission from agent montebanc

"Frozen" Movie Review

by Andrew Moshos

When they’re this enjoyable, watching kids movies, or at least movies aimed at kids and their guardians, is a joy, and you thank the heavens above that you’re a parent and that you get to share these sublime experiences with your kids.

When they’re the usual terrible children’s fare, be it Smurf this or Shrek that, then it’s a purgatorial experience that makes you curse the universe for ever fooling you into breeding in the first place. You start making appointments to get your tubes tied before you even leave the cinema.

Thankfully, nothing needed to be ligatured or sterilised as a result of watching this film with my glorious child in tow. We both enjoyed the hell out of it, and that is exactly as it should be. It may not be as almost completely perfect as Tangled was, since while I liked some of the songs here, I loved the songs in Tangled, and that matters when it comes to a musical comedy animated movie thingie etc.

So some of the songs aren't that great, though the central one, sung by one of the sisters when she turns evil, is pretty strong. They're that musical theatre kind of songs, that's fine if you can handle that sort of thing, but purgatorial if you can't.

Nothing in this flick, song-wise, is anywhere near as great as the "I've Got a Dream" song from Tangled, but at least everything else is in perfect working order. Well, maybe not perfect, because this is Disney after all, and it's an experience in treacledom at the best and worst of times.

And, well, it's impossible to ignore that thing that Disney does so well, which is craft familiar confections with the same conservative, inherently sexist conception of female protagonists perpetually cute and perky and waiting for a man to complete them so they can live happily ever after. Instead of just having one princess, this has two, so double the girliness and falling over, and double the unrealistic representations of insectiod girl bodies where wrists and thighs are thinner than eyes. Manga/anime has nothing on Disney.

And yet, everything I've mentioned and could mention is stuff outside of the frame of my actual experience in the cinema. Sure it's clichéd, clichéd in the sense that the paradigms and dynamics of how these stories are constructed seem to never vary, to be ticked off the same clipboard checklist that's always used without fail 1) Animal sidekick? Check. 2) Rough but handsome love interest of humble origins who plays by his own rules? Check. 3) Small creature magical or otherwise for comic relief? Check. 4) A convoluted premise that could have been solved from the start if someone had just mentioned something to someone? Check.

It almost was so unnecessarily self-sabotaging, what kicks the drama off, that it made me think the protagonists were slightly idiotic, but that's by the by.

Two children play, in a mythical place called Arendelle which is meant to be some generic Nordic/Scandinavian type place. Elsa has Iceman-like powers, creating ice and snow on demand, like one of them fridges from the 1980s where you push your glass against a lever and then ice cubes cascade out onto the floor, with a few going into your glass. The other sister, Anna, gets hurt by accident. Anna's parents, and some trolls (?), decide that the best solution is to erase Anna's memory of what happened, and to effectively isolate both the sisters from each other, and everyone else in Christendom from Elsa.

I never had an inkling of why they did any of this, and it seemed so fundamentally arbitrary that it bugged me for much of the flick, so much so that I'm still thinking about it now. In fact, you know what? It made no sense. Elsa and Anna, you had terrible, well-meaning, best intentioned parents. Their stupid decision made everything else happen because of their reckless over-parenting. Clearly, had the era the flick is set in allowed for helicopters, they'd be in helicopters exhibiting their best helicopter parenting above you right now. Instead, they drown at sea during a shipwreck, which is probably the most deserved fate I've seen in a film since the end of Zero Dark Thirty, where a certain bearded guy cops bullets to the face.

The sisters grow up, and Anna sings songs about missing her sister, and wanting to play with her. Elsa almost reaches out, but decides she can't, not until she figures out how to control her awesome ice powers.

Fear becomes inextricably linked with her abilities, and when she starts worrying about losing control, and freezing stuff, she loses control and freezes stuff. It's kind of like when a guy starts worrying about not being able to 'perform' in bed, and you end up making your fears a reality in a way that leaves everybody unhappy. Or so I've heard. From some other guys.

She has a particularly big freak out on the day she's meant to be crowned queen, and, during her coronation, which was pretty boring anyway, she freezes the whole town, despite the fact that it's summer. Way to mess with local organic farmers, lady.

She leaves town, perhaps forever, and decides, "Forget all y'all fools. I'm doing my own thing." In probably my second favourite bit of the whole film, and it's a film I like a lot of, Elsa sings a song where she lets go of her previous constrained life, while she constructs her own ice palace on top of a mountain, deciding that everyone else sucks, and she'll be better off on her own.

You go, girl. Let it go indeed. Loved that bit of the film. Sometimes, isolated jerks and anti-social people should be left on their own. They'll be way happier that way, and so would the people who would otherwise have to put up with them.

The problem is, though, all of Arrendelle is under ice, and getting icier, and that's not going to be good for all the people of Arrendelle if they become popsicles. So Anna has to set out and blah blah blah.

I can be dismissive about this kind of stuff and plot, but that's not to say it didn't breeze along and provide us with a likeable (enough) bunch of characters to be entertained by with their copious amounts of shenanigans. Anna couldn't possibly solves her problems herself, she needs some big burly guy called Kristoff to help her out, and not even just him, but his companion/life partner Sven the reindeer, and a snowman called Olaf, and so the whole gang is trying to save both Elsa and Arendelle.

Small irritating magical companion? Tick that off the list, too. Doubtless, Anna and Kristoff and the other hangers-on will have adventures and such before the end, and most of it will pan out exactly as we expect.

But, and this is a big but, just like the one's Sir Mixalot can't lie about liking, it manages to tie all these elements together really well. Of course the visuals are magnificent, the 3D was competent (as it usually is in 3D animated movies versus 3D live action flicks drowning in CGI), the voice work is fine, the gags come thick and fast, with a decent mixture of visual and verbal gags, and the story isn't all wrapped up in a pretty bow by the end.

These Disney princess shenanigans are basically a way of selling more princesses that look exactly like the other Disney princesses to the aspiring 2 to 10 year old girls out there, and I can't ignore that it's about marketing. But thankfully they subverted the archetype enough for me not to want to hurl my masticated popcorn at the screen. In fact, despite seeming to flirt with it at the beginning, romantic love between two simpletons arises, but is squashed by experience and necessity. In fact, it's the whirlwind 'romance' between Anna and some idiot that prompts Elsa to go berserk and freeze everyone in the first place. It's the sheer stupidity of Anna wanting to marry some tool she's known for ten minutes that tips Elsa over the edge.

What really got me the most, what really sealed the deal for me as to whether I'd like this film or not, is the resolution both to Arendelle's climate change problems, and to a wound that Anna's suffers towards the end. An act of true love will save Anna, but it ends up not being the moment you'd assume, given the obsession with hetero-normative monogamy these stories invariably obligate.

It was a moment of such love, such beauty, and such power that it brought me to tears, and I can't remember the last time Disney did that. It was a truly lovely moment on the way to a predictable end.

It's Anna's story, but it almost seems unfair that it is so. You'd think that Elsa, with the powers and all, would have been the natural lead. They almost take the tack that Elsa will become a villain, and she would have been a pretty awesome villain at that, but they manage to have her straddle the line. That hardly makes her a complicated character, since Disney loathes complexity (it's written in its charter - no moustaches, no complexity), but it begrudgingly allows for nuance, sometimes. It's made pretty clear that Elsa could have become a full blown villain, were it not for the pure love of her little sis.

I liked it a lot, I really had a ball watching it, and my soon-to-be seven year old daughter loved it too. She said "Frozen is a great movie. I like it how the baddie isn't too bad, and is good on the inside, but she acts a little bit like she's a bit bad sometimes. I would like to recommend Frozen to all kids who like movies at the cinema, or who are having a movie party." She loved the snowman character the most, truly showing that my inner child was long ago strangled in the crib, and that adults hate the bits kids love the most and vice versa, but she thought it was the best animated movie we've seen since the last one.

She says that about everything, but she's probably right.

8 times if I had freezing powers I would definitely be freezing Melbourne on one of these 35+ degree days out of 10

How To Train Your Dragon 2 Movie Review

by Andrew Moshos

dir: Dean DeBlois

It seems perhaps a tad inappropriate to keep calling these sequels How to Train Your Dragon etc, since, presumably, the dragons should be fully trained by now, yeah?

And if they’re not trained by now, they’re never going to be trained, face it. Some animals, and some people, just can’t be domesticated. Perhaps The Continuing Education of Flying Mythical Reptiles didn’t sit as well with the marketing executives at DreamWorks as a potential title.

But it has my vote for best alternative title. Well, maybe that or “Looky here! What’s that thing over there, proof that Creationists are right?” gets my vote.

I’m going to try to avoid hyperbolic language and such when talking about this flick or the original one, because it's tempting, and it's really easy. Thus I shouldn't give in. I will say that the first one was pretty amazing. This sequel is, for me, almost at least as good, if not an advancement in the story that belies its supposed sequel-dependent nature.

It is inevitable that successful flicks get sequels, even when it doesn't really make much sense to keep pushing forward with them. It generally always makes economic sense, hence the inevitability. I am more than happy about there being an extension of this story. For whatever reasons, the story of Vikings befriending dragons really clicked with me when it came out four years ago, and seeing the trailer for this second one thrilled the bejesus out of me.

The trailer was not a deceptive let-down at all, in fact it gave me enough of a sense of what was to come without giving it all away. I can't and won't say that the plot is anything dramatically different or radical, but it works well enough in the context of the story we might like to see with these characters.

Hiccup, voiced by Jay Baruchel, is the heart and soul of the film, along with his faithful dragon Toothless. Everything in the story is about him dealing with the expectations of his father, dealing with being disabled, and of being the default spokesman for humanity when it comes to human/dragon relations. As such, he is completely and utterly nothing like the Vikings we would expect or know about based on our own Earth history.

He is a stand-in, in some ways, and this isn't just because he sounds like the neurotic Jewish hipster who makes your coffee if you live in Brooklyn Heights, for modernity in the face of tradition. As such he's the most obvious audience substitute. Situations that would otherwise demand killing and bloodshed to be resolved the Viking way he strives to resolve the Hiccup way: with pleas towards understanding and connection.

If it's sounding like it's about communism or a bunch of people singing Kumbaya in some Viking dialect, well remember that there are like a million dragons in this, so it's mostly about dragon action. Dragon upon dragon, dragon upon human, human upon human, most of the possibilities are explored. In Hiccup's relentless and inventive drive towards understanding, he still, inevitably ends up in conflict with all the people around him, especially his father Stoick, who pretty much never listens to him.

Now, one concern that my daughter had was that a bunch of elements in this film were different from stuff that was established in the Cartoon Network series Dragons: Riders of Berk. It's the same characters and the same setting, but they've elected to ignore any developments on that show, much to my daughter's burning frustration. It made her bark fiery words of scorn at the screen such as "But Stoick doesn't ride that kind of dragon, he rides a Thunder Drum!" It's perhaps a shame, but it ultimately doesn't matter. No thought is given to continuity there because, hell, what does it matter anyway?

And developments develop of a sufficiently serious nature here that I don't think they're going to connect those series with the movies, which are striking off in a whole new and permanent-feeling direction. A few things happen in the flick which definitively change the status quo of the characters' universe.

Plus, Dragons! They are all exquisitely well animated, and the sheer delight I felt in watching these creatures in flight was just as strong in this sequel as it was what I beheld with wonder in the first flick. The action, when it comes, is stupendously well realised, and looks as great as anything I've ever seen at the cinemas.

If I have a complaint, and I can only really think of two, it's that it didn't really feel like an adventure and a story that the 'crew' solved, enjoyed or survived together. Perhaps because of watching the tv show, I expected that the moronic, obnoxious and piss-weak collection of 'kids' in Snotlout, Fishlegs, Astrid, Ruffnut and Tuffnut and their dragons would be with Hiccup at every step of the way. But really, it's all about his individual Luke Skywalker-like journey towards being the greatest inventor/chieftain/dragonrider/Jedi that he can be.

As such, the crew are mostly relegated to comic relief, and most of it isn’t that funny. A fair amount of sniffing, ogling and whining occurs when two characters keeping mooning over Ruffnut (Kristen Wiig), but that’s turned around as she ogles and sniffs after a new character who’s introduced. This is still a kid’s film, but the way they get around that by ‘sexualising’ the image of Eret’s straining, sweat-slick bicep is hilarious. To me at least.

As an antagonist, they have a weird dreadlocked angry scary guy who knows a few things about dragons himself. The charmingly named Drago Bludvist (Djimon Hounsou) yells at people and growls in a most adorable fashion. He really hates dragons, and he hates them so much that he wants to conquer all of them presumably before he sets off and then takes over the world.

He wants to enslave them all, Hiccup wants to free them all and get everyone to live together in perfect harmony, side by side like the ebony and ivory keys on my piano. The wrinkle they throw into this is that someone else is trying to save dragons from Drago, and this person is a complete mystery! I couldn't guess just from the trailers who it would be, and whether she was friend or foe.

Fingers crossed for foe. Nah, she's voiced by Cate Blanchett, so she must be someone wonderful. One of my favourite visual images or scenes from the flick involved her character, called Valka, I believe, wing walking along a bunch of dragons in mid-flight, casually sauntering along like it was a Sunday stroll down the boulevard, dressed in her freaky "I wish I was a dragon too" armour.

It's nice to see her character introduced, but I'm not sure her character makes a lot of sense, even if she is (now) necessary. The connection she has to Berk is such that her reasons for staying away for twenty whole years makes little to no sense. You don't write, you don't call, you could easily have dropped by, since, with your frequent flyer points and, um, a million dragons at your disposal, could have flown around any time over the last two decades.

But no, then it wouldn't have been a surprise. It would have been much easier, motivation-wise, for her to just admit that the Viking life was boring for her, and she preferred the company of dragons. Because, let's face it, things were pretty grim and dull until the dragons came along. No dental hygiene, old age in your thirties, uncomfortable underwear, all that pillaging and the other thing, nasty.

If there is another element that was problematic for me, and I did mention that there were two, it's that there is no real need for complexity in a flick like this, but the simplistic nature of the good versus evil equals white versus black struck me as queasily irritating. Two great beasts struggle to control all of dragonkind, and the only way these geniuses could think of to differentiate them was that the 'good' one was pure white, and the 'bad' one was darker. Really?

Weird. But other than that, you know, it was all perfect. Kit Harrington, who some might know as Jon Snow from Game of Thrones, voices a part here as Eret, a dragon trapper who is eventually befriended by the crew. Every second time he would speak, since I recognised his voice, I’d shake my head contemptuously and mutter to myself with the accent of a Scottish / Wildling woman "You know nothing, Eret."

Ah, the petty things that amuse me. The smaller scale conflicts, the larger conflicts are all resolved in a satisfying way, balancing the big moments with the tiny ones, like the love of a father for a son, or of a boy for his dragon. I found it enthralling, enrapturing, delightful and irritating at points, but only at very small rare points. It’s also very sad at a few keys points, so much so that the ‘happy ending’ seemed a little glib, to me, like they were worried that if they dwelled on what happened, audiences would wail and tear their garments upon leaving the cinema, or poke out the lenses from their 3D glasses and vow never again to care about a computer-generated character lest they feel such tremendous loss again.

I don’t know if there’s more story to explore in a third flick. I’m willing to find out, that’s for sure, because I enjoyed it, and I’m a man of advancing years and dubious merits, and my daughter enjoyed it, and she’s a brilliant firecracker of a seven-year-old, so they’ve got those two demographics covered.

It’s a delight.

9 times I wonder what I could do with a massive dragon army - that doesn’t involve killing everyone who disagrees with me out of 10

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“This is Berk. Life here is amazing. Dragons used to be a bit of a problem. But now they've all moved in.” – that’s one way to solve the problem – How to Train Your Dragon 2